Didi can’t play sore loser

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has taken the Lok Sabha results a little too personally and has been acting up lately. It was her choice whether to accept Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to his swearing-in or not; many CMs gave it the go-by. By politicking over it in retaliation for the BJP inviting the relatives of its workers reportedly killed in poll violence, she is seen more as a sore loser than a champion of the masses. Continuing her agitational politics by holding dharnas reflects poorly on her own governance. She is really cutting her nose to spite her face! As head of the state government, it’s up to her to order inquiries on whether political murders have taken place, and if any of her own partymen are to blame for incidents in communally sensitive areas.

The point is that too much of her posturing is seen as being linked to her Trinamul Congress losing 18 of 42 Lok Sabha seats to the BJP, while retaining only 22. As a feisty political personality, she had achieved the unthinkable over the years in forming her own party and then taking on the Left Front and demolishing its 34-year-old rule in the state in 2011, and keeping the Congress at bay in West Bengal. It’s in losing ground to the BJP, with the Assembly elections just two years away, that the cracks are showing. The politics of violence can’t be allowed to continue irrespective of which direction the state polls may be heading. It’s up to Mamata Banerjee to put her administration in order to exercise her authority as the state’s chief minister.