After ‘party prod’, BJP MP shies away from edu min meet
Times of India | 10 April 2025
12 Kolkata: BJP MP Abhijit Ganguly, an ex-judge, went to the School Service Commission's Salt Lake office on Wednesday but did not have the schedule 2 pm meeting with education minister Bratya Basu, which he himself had confirmed on Tuesday.
On record, he said, it was in protest against the police assault on protesters in Kasba. The unofficial version, which Ganguly denied, was that his party leadership did not endorse him engaging with the state govt on one-to-one basis when other party seniors were on the streets in protest. However, sources said at least one BJP senior called Ganguly and conveyed the party's thoughts.
Ganguly first went to meet SSC chairperson Siddhartha Majumder, and then held a press conference. He said, "We asked the commission to publish copies of the OMR sheets that they received from CBI and publish two separate lists for tainted and untainted and submit them to the SC. I wanted to send a letter to the chief minister, but after hearing about the brutal attack on the protesting teachers and the intolerance that the state govt has shown towards them, now it's completely unnecessary to go and meet the education minister and submit the letter that I was supposed to submit." He tore up the letter during the press conference.
Basu stated that Ganguly gave a "lame excuse" and avoided a scheduled meeting. "He himself wanted to come. Rising above political differences, he appealed to the CM. I advised him to make a written appeal instead of speaking to the media. Even then, he did not come. This incident reminded me of a folk song: you bite like a snake and then act as the healer. Whether his party advised him against it, only he can say."
Ganguly, however, said: "Whatever I decided and acted on was entirely my own decision. Whatever transpired in the past 48 hours is what my conscience told me to do." BJP MP Samik Bhattacharya said he was not aware of any party senior influencing Ganguly. "He was hurt that so many genuine teachers lost their jobs. He kept saying that he wanted to intervene. He believes that documents in Calcutta High Court, along with records recovered in the hard disk, can still save jobs. His decision today has been borne by the fact that a teacher got kicked by a cop," he said.