It has been five days since West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has assumed office and officialdom is in a tizzy. Not to speak of her security staff desperately trying to cope with her unpredictable ways even as she goes about her duties in her inimitable and flamboyant fashion.
The morning crowd in the city's busy commercial hub was taken by surprise on Tuesday when Ms. Banerjee got off her vehicle at the street-turning leading to the Writers' Buildings and walked the short distance to the Secretariat even before a protective security ring could be thrown around her. Onlookers surged towards her as policemen tried to keep them at bay.
The surprises had just begun. A person sneaked in through the security cordon only to stumble and fall before her. He was whisked away as the Chief Minister, annoyed with the police for their handling, entered the Secretariat after waving out at the crowd. Prohibitory orders under Section 144 Cr. PC customarily in force in the area had been, for those few minutes, thrown to the winds.
It might have just been yet another public display of adulation for the new Chief Minister, the likes of which one had witnessed albeit on a more mammoth scale, when Ms. Banerjee walked the distance of about 1.5 km separating the Raj Bhavan from the Writers' Buildings a few hours after being sworn in on May 20.
The Chief Minister has already insisted that she will not travel in a bullet-proof vehicle, without beacon lights and a pilot car. All these have also raised serious questions of security, the efforts of the administration towards making it unobtrusive, notwithstanding.
And if this is just another proof of the “change” Ms. Banerjee had promised to usher in before assuming office, then it is also already in evidence within the corridors of power: It is certainly more than just about Saturdays being made workdays for Ministers and the officials concerned, about decisions of the previous government re-looked at and old files sought for, about altered time schedules — the Chief Minister and her Ministers were in the Secretariat well past mid-night on their first day there.
The ongoing thorough overhauling of the Chief Minister's chamber is seen as symbolic of her resolve, in one fell swoop, to cast away the vestiges of more than 34-year-long reign of the Left Front.
Hours after assuming office, the Chief Minister commented at the appalling absence of “infrastructure” at the Writers' Buildings about which precious little had been done over the past years. It has also got her to wonder “how has work being done” in such “conditions.”
