Subrata wins battle, loses war

Then again, such little consolations may not give him enough reason to relax. After all nothing succeeds like success in the power game of politics.

‘‘As the Mayor, Subrata Mukherjee spearheaded many development works in the city, which made a qualitative difference to the lives of the people,’’ Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president and Union Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on many occasions in the run-up to the KMC polls.

It was no secret that Subrata was being projected as the mascot of the UDA, which ended up bagging 19 of the 141 KMC wards.

At many levels, the KMC campaigns were seem as an exercise in weighing the ‘‘development works’’ done by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s state government and Mayor Subrata Mukherjee’s Kolkata Municipal Corporation.

‘‘Subrata did give Mamata a scare,’’ pointed out one of his associates. ‘‘She had to field many party bigwigs in the civic polls to save the day and manage 44 seats. Had she heeded his advice that only a Trinamool-Congress combine can effectively take on the Left Front, we could have retained power.’’