Singur leaders find no place in Mamata Banerjee's cabinet

KOLKATA: Singur, the epicenter of Mamata Banerjee's call for change, has not found a representation in her cabinet this time as Rabindranath Bhattacharya and Becharam Manna — the two faces of Banerjee's Singur movement — have lost the Trinamool leader’s favour.

Both Bhattacharya and Manna were part of the last cabinet. Party insiders see a factional feud that erupted between the two just before the 2016 elections as a reason for Banerjee dropping both in favour of Hooghly district President, Tapan Dasgupta.

Dasgupta has been given the charge of agriculture marketing department. Bhattacharya, an octogenarian MLA from Singur in charge of the agriculture department in the first Banerjee cabinet, though through three reshuffles he finally landed the charge of the less significant statistics and programme implementation ministry.

Manna was made the minister of state for the agriculture department. “There was an expectation. The people of Singur too expected to have their representative in the cabinet.

But, every time you do not get what you expect. Our leader must have thought something and accordingly taken a call. I respect her decision,” Bhattacharya told ET.

In recent times, Banerjee too tried to keep Singur issue away from limelight. Banerjee maintained that her government has been fighting a long legal tussle over Singur and she hoped that Singur will get justice soon.