Mamata puja avatar now leaves CPM praying

If the visitors to the Trinamool Congress’s congested headquarters on Harish Chatterjee Street are greeted by a photograph of Mamata head covered and offering namaaz,the party’s publication Jago Bangla this month has been printed in larger numbers,all carrying a picture of Goddess Durga on the cover sketched by the Mamata herself.

Seizing on the short-cut to a million votes,if not hearts,the Trinamool has turned the Durga Puja into its biggest PR exercise. One such puja organised by Trinamool Congress MLA Arup Biswas,under the banner of Suruchi Sangha in New Alipore,emerged as one of the biggest draws. This time the Suruchi Sangha officially spent Rs 8 lakh on the idol,with the pandal depicting a Jharkhand tribal village and showcasing how they lived in close proximity to nature.

Mamata visited the pandal,as she did many others,doing the rounds well past midnight and sometimes into the wee hours. “That’s been her routine for all these puja days,” said a party leader.

Mamata’s own brother is one of the key organisers of the Milan Sabha Puja on Harish Chatterjee Street. Another Mamata loyalist and a Trinamool councillor spent over Rs 10 lakh with its Chetla Agrani Sangha.

The Trinamool’s growing popularity was also evident in the number of invitations to party ministers and leaders by puja committees. MP Sudip Bandopadhyay,for instance,inaugurated 40 pujas. “What can I do? People want us and we have to respond. People’s choice is evident even through pujas,” says Bandopadhyay.

If Mamata anyway had a headstart over the “atheist” Communists in this regard,she is taking them on even in the only area that they could safely venture into during the pujas: the literature stalls they put up outside the pandals,selling Marxist literature. The 200 Jago Bangla stalls which are up and running this time have dwarfed even them. Last week,a pitched battle erupted between Trinamool and CPM supporters over setting up of a Jago Bangla stall near a puja pandal in north Kolkata.

The Jago Bangal stalls stock about 20 books written by Mamata each,apart from writings and articles on the land acquisition debate in West Bengal by important literary personalities like Mahasweta Devi,Debabrata Bandopadhyay and others.

In times such as this,the Left is sorely missing the late Subash Chakravarty,the one CPM leader who openly admitted that the pujas were a big PR opportunity. Asked if the Marxists were losing out,Rajya Sabha MP and CPM spokesperson Shyamal Chakravarty said: “The Congress and Trinamool are always involved with pujas. It is hard to

assess who is winning and who is losing out.”

In fact,the Congress is offering some challenge to the Trinamool,with West Bengal PCC chief Subrata Mukherjee’s Ekdalia Evergreen Puja in Ballygunge being one of the biggest draws in south Kolkata.

However,Mukherjee admits that the Pujas will answer a lot of Mamata’s prayers. “There are positive indications for her,” he says. “But we would rather watch out till 2011.”