Kolkata, Dec 3: Mamata Banerjee left Nabanna at 6.20pm on Friday, after spending 30 hours and 14 minutes in the CMO, easily the longest time a Bengal chief minister has spent at the government headquarters since 1977. An hour earlier, around 5pm, the last of the Army trucks accused of "surveillance" by the Bengal government left its toll booth posting at Ghoshpukur in Jalpaiguri, about 600km away.
The two withdrawals on Friday marked the end of only the first act of a drama that started unfolding 10 days ago, on November 23, with an innocuous letter from the defence ministry to the officer-in-charge of the Hastings police station. The exchange of angry words in New Delhi and Kolkata and two trending hashtags #MamataCoupCharge #MamataAgainstNation indicate no one has seen the end of the "routine affair" undertaken by the Indian Army every year.
The CM's marathon and unprecedented digging-in at the state secretariat, Trinamool leaders agreed, revealed how Delhi-Kolkata politics was moving into the realm of the unknown. No Bengal CM has said what Banerjee said on Thursday and Friday, when she accused the Centre of "using the Army against our (Bengal) government", which prompted Union minister Ananth Kumar to request Trinamool Lok Sabha leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay "to leave the Indian Army out of politics".
The truth, as often in politics, might lie somewhere in between and in the interpretation of whether "intimation" is the same as "permission". The letters from the Army, issued to various state government agencies starting from November 23, indicate that it had "intimated" the state government about its intent to conduct the annual exercise of monitoring the movement of heavy vehicles on National Highways. But the state government said the Army did not obtain "permission" to conduct the exercise and rushed into it; law and order was very much a state government domain, seniors in the government said.
On Thursday, the CM had said that the Army was deployed without informing her government and had announced that she would stay put at Nabanna till "the Army withdrew from the state". State parliamentary affairs minister Partha Chatterjee on Friday modified the charge somewhat when he said: "The Army hadn't taken prior permission from the state government, which they should have because law and order comes under the state's domain."
There is no official document available with the Army to show that the state gave its consent. On the contrary, chief secretary Basudeb Banerjee wrote to the Union cabinet secretary on December 1, taking exception to the "vehicle impressment exercise" conducted by the Army at Vidyasagar Setu toll plaza less than a kilometre from Nabanna. "This is highly objectionable," Banerjee wrote.
But Army claimed that came as a surprise because Army personnel conducted a joint reconnaissance with two inspectors of Kolkata Police at Vidyasagar Setu on November 27. "We mutually identified the locations and telephonically conveyed that the issue had been resolved. This is how we conducted the exercise," officiating GoC, Bengal area, Sunil Yadav, said.
But that joint inspection came two days after additional commissioner of police (III) Supratim Sarkar wrote to the Army, advising against taking up the exercise at that spot because of the "huge traffic volume and its proximity to the state secretariat". The Army postponed the exercise to November 30, changing its earlier plan to carry out the exercise on December 28, following requests from Kolkata Police because of the strike call for November 28.
Army also referred to the similar exercise in Bengal last year and in Jharkhand, UP and Bihar this year.
The CM, however, insisted that the Army overstepped its brief. "The Army intimated the police about the exercise at only Vidyasagar Setu but not for the activities elsewhere in the state. Army personnel were deployed afresh across the state when I was at Nabanna. The matter went up to Parliament and the government's reply is misleading, full of misinformation and disinformation. It's a concocted story. I would like to thank members of the opposition who backed our cause in Parliament. It has happened in Bengal because we are with the people. A total 82 lives have been lost after demonetisation," the CM said before leaving her post on Friday.
Earlier, Trinamool legislators staged a dharna in front of Raj Bhavan.
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