Minorities, who comprise 30 per cent of the state’s population and crucial TMC votebank, are miffed following the release of Trinamul Congress manifesto. Yasser Haider, former secretary of Trinamul Youth Congress and son-in-law of Firhad Hakim, a key minister in chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s Cabinet, said, “The manifesto shows how the party is deviating from its policy towards the minority. Not a single initiative for the development of the minorities in the state has been taken into account seriously this time in the manifesto.” “I have snapped all my political relations with Trinamul Congress soon after it decided to give tickets to film personalities of Tollywood to contest elections ignoring the genuine hard workers like me who used to round-theclock for the party for years. It’s evident that party leaders are little bothered about these hard workers and minorities who played a decisive role to make her chief minister,” said aggrieved Haider who has aired his grievances against the party about two weeks ago in the social media. window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []}; googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.defineSlot(`/96277396/single-article-ad-new`, [300, 250], `div-gpt-ad-1616332879619-0`).addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); googletag.enableServices(); }); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(`div-gpt-ad-1616332879619-0`); }); A senior TMC leader belonging to the minority community said, “In a do-ordie battle to take on the BJP Mamata Banerjee is desperate to woo the Hindu vote banks. She is visiting many temples offering prayers. She has already brought down the number of Muslim candidates contesting assembly polls to 44 only in this election while the figures were 61 and 56 in 2011 and 2016 respectively.” “Muslim vote banks play a major role to bring Trinamul Congress led by Mamata Banerjee to power ending 34 years of Left regime in 2011. Surprisingly, we noticed nothing has been mentioned about developments of Muslims in the manifesto. The number of Muslim representatives in the Assembly is also declining. This trend is being noticed since 2016 when 56 Muslims had contested the Assembly polls with Trinamul Congress tickets,” said Faruque Ahamed, editor of the Bengali literary magazine ‘Udar Aakash’. In 2016 Assembly polls, TMC in its manifesto had laid emphasis on minorities development like distribution of bicycles to students between class IX to XII, setting up of Aliah University in north Bengal and medical colleges in areas dominated by minority population etc. “It’s very unfortunate to see the election manifesto of Trinamul Congress where nothing has been allocated for minorities. The party is interested in identity politics with a prominent deviation from social empowerment, employment and industrial investment,” said professor Abdul Matin of Jadavpur University. The manifesto released by the Left is rational and pro-people cutting across religious identity of the voters, Matin said.

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