In a bid to give more responsibilities to her nephew and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Friday merged Trinamool Congress Yuva with the Trinamool Youth Congress. Abhishek will now be at the helm of the Trinamool Youth Congress. In a party meeting that lasted over three hours, Mamata made several changes in the party’s organisation and sought to address workers’ sinking morale. Exhorting the office-bearers to “aggressively counter any smear campaign against the party,” Mamata asked the leaders why do they “remain silent” and “not speak against a section of the media that is out to malign the party”. In other significant changes, Mamata replaced Trinamool Youth Congress’ state president Shankudeb Ponda with Ashok Rudra, a youth leader from Asansol. Ponda will now be one of the general secretaries of TMYC. Mamata also clipped wings of Dola Sen — the defeated MP from Asansol — and appointed party veteran Subrata Mukherjee “to look after and guide” the trade union wings of the party which was Sen’s responsibility up until now. She also appointed Chandranath Sinha as the party’s Birbhum district spokesperson, sidestepping Anubrata Mondal who had courted controversies with his comments several times in the recent past.
