West Bengal Chief Minster Mamata Banerjee will meet BJP MP Subramanian Swamy in Delhi on Wednesday, which will be followed by her meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Her meeting with Swamy is being keenly watched by political circles, triggering memories of 1999 when the latter joined hands with three women—J. Jayalalitha, Mayawati and Mamata—to bring down the Atal Behari Vajpayee government.
With Jayalalitha no more and Mayawati busy preparing for the big UP elections, what could Swamy’s meeting with Mamata mean for the Modi government? Swamy’s ‘biggest rival’ in the Modi government was the late Arun Jaitley whom he considered a ‘bad finance minister’. Even after Jaitley’s death, Swami has had conflicts with many in the BJP, including the party’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya.
When post-poll violence rocked West Bengal in May, Swamy was the first BJP MP who wanted Modi to dismiss the Mamata government in the state. But lately, Swamy has been taking Mamata's side on various matters. Most recently, he had criticised the Centre when it denied permission to Mamata to visit Rome. Trinamool Congress sources said that Mamata has invited Swamy to join her party. She is in a bid to streamline her base in Delhi and revamp the party organisation in south India. Swamy, an economist with good connections in Delhi, could advise her on such matters.
During her meeting with Modi, Mamata is likely to demand funds for the state. Sources said that the chief minister might press for allocation of pending central funds and an international bank bailout package for the state. Modi would perhaps tell Mamata to meet Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on that. In the past, Mamata maintained that she would not meet any cabinet minister politically junior to her. Besides Modi and Rajnath Singh, she has not met anyone else in the Modi cabinet yet.
Mamata would also take up the issue of a permanent DGP for Bengal. According to sources, she would request Modi to streamline the process of picking a person of her choice through the UPSC. The Head of Police Force (HOPF) is yet to be chosen in Bengal and the state has had an acting DG for the last three months.
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As per Supreme Court direction, the state should choose from three names shortlisted by the UPSC. Manoj Malviya, great grandson of freedom fighter Madan Mohan Malviya, is the senior most on the list. But Mamata rejected him because the 1986-batch IPS officer’s name had cropped up in various corruption allegations. Recently, an RTI was filed with the MHA to know the status of cases pending against Malviya. The Information Commission, however, passed it on to the state government saying that since Malviya is an officer of Bengal cadre, the state would be the appropriate authority to deal with the query. Soon after Mamata’s meeting with the Modi last month, two other top contenders for the post—Suman Bala Sahoo and Nirajnayan Pandey—were offered central deputation. Both the officers have reportedly declined the offer, sources said. None of them could be contacted. Mamata’s choice is state security director Vivek Sahay who was suspended by the Election Commission after Mamata got injured during her election campaign in Nandigram.
Mamata is also likely to meet Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi on Thursday. Sources in the BJP said no appointment has been granted so far. Mamata would raise the issue of Tripura and the extension of the Border Security Force’s (BSF) jurisdiction. At least 12 districts and 20 parliamentary seats now fall under the scanner of the BSF.
