ON THE WARPATH
On June 5, World Environment Day, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee visited a well-known park in Kolkata to plant a neem sapling and announce a big afforestation drive—of 50 million mangrove saplings—in the Sundarbans, ravaged by Cyclone Amphan late last month. Bringing up the cyclone served another purpose. In its single-minded quest for power in Bengal, the BJP, she raged, was politicising even natural calamities like Amphan and great adversities like the COVID-19 pandemic. “While we (her party, the Trinamool Congress) are labouring to save people, one political party is busy canvassing to overthrow our government,” she said, adding, for good measure, “Am I saying Narendra Modi should be thrown out of [power in] Delhi? This is not the time for politics.”
But that, political observers in Bengal will confirm, is a defensive political counter to the BJP, now her main adversary in the state. The BJP, which took 18 of 42 Lok Sabha seats in the
