It was a typical Pramod Mahajan move. Saying in the morning at the BJP’s Eastern Region Workers’ Conference here: ‘‘Kalighat and Mamtaji ke darshan ke liye koi invitation nahin lagta.’’ Then sitting by and listening to colleague Tapan Sikdar rip her apart. And finally, landing up in the evening at Trinamool Congress MP Sudip Bandopadhyay’s residence, setting off political grist mill and stoking Mamata’s anger.Political circles were already reading ‘‘something else’’ into the tea invitation, seeing it as pressure tactic by the Trinamool leaders unhappy with Mamata’s decision to part ways with the NDA. Senior Kolkata telephone officials had even rung up newspaper offices to inform them about the meeting and to invite them to attend it. Another prominent Trinamool rebel, Ajit Panja, was a special invitee at the BJP conference today.Mahajan, of course, denied the rumours. ‘‘I have invited him (Bandopadhyay) so many times. Now he has invited me.I have not come to disintegrate the Trinamool Congress. We want it as part and parcel of the NDA. No one can think of dislodging the communist ideology or the government from Bengal without Mamata Banerjee.”But Mamata had no time for niceties. She gave it back at a convention on railway bifurcation at the Mahajati Sadan today. In a clear warning to Bandopadhyay, she said all Trinamool MPs should remember that ‘‘we are out of the NDA as long as the decision to bifurcate the Eastern Railway is not reviewed’’.
