Trinamool Congress president and former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday led a protest walk in central Kolkata against the recent hawker eviction drives carried out by the state administration across different parts of the state.
However, the event failed to make a mark because of fewer attendees. Although a public meeting was initially planned at the end of the protest walk from Esplanade to Subodh Mallick Square, both in central Kolkata, it was later cancelled.
The former Chief Minister left immediately after the protest walk ended. Since the landslide defeat of Trinamool and Mamata Banerjee’s personal defeat in the recently concluded West Bengal assembly elections, she has restricted her political programmes mainly to occasional video messages on social media.
After her nephew and Trinamool general secretary Abhishek Banerjee was attacked at Sonarpur in South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal last month, she sat on a protest demonstration on June 2, which was her last public programme. On Wednesday, she led a protest walk against the hawker eviction.
However, the event failed to attract a large number of attendees, with only a few front-ranking Trinamool leaders participating. Political observers feel that the major reason why Wednesday’s event turned into a virtual flop show is that both Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee have lost control over the party’s legislative team in the West Bengal assembly, as well as the party’s Parliamentary team in the Lok Sabha.
What was surprising was that many senior Trinamool leaders, who officially maintain their allegiance to Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee, were also absent from Wednesday’s protest walk. Besides hawker eviction, the two other issues on which Wednesday’s protest walk was organised were “attacks on Trinamool workers in different parts of the state” and “the arrests of Trinamool leaders one after another on allegedly false charges.”