PAES AND NAFISA ‘IMPORTED’ FROM BENGAL TO GOA

New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee is turning out to be a great political strategist. When she recently went on a three-day tour of Goa, she got two well-known Bengalis to join her party and gave a message as if it was going to cause huge upheaval in Goa’s politics. Mamata began her Bengal journey with the inclusion of famous tennis player Leander Paes and wellknown actress and model Nafisa Ali in her party.

The fact is that both of them are from Bengal and their family roots are very deep in West Bengal. Leander Paes comes from the family of renowned Bengali writer Michael Madhusudan Dutt. He was born in Bengal and did his early studies from La Martiniere School and later studied at St. Xavier’s College. He currently resides in Mumbai. The sole purpose of making him join the party in Goa is to send the message that he is a Christian and this will woo the Christian vote of Goa. Think, the leaders of the country term voters as their masters but how they play games to fool their ‘masters’. However, like Leander, Nafisa is also Bengali and her family has also been associated with Bengali literature, culture. Her grandfather S Wajid Ali is a well-known Bengali writer. She is also associated with Bir Prateek Akhtar Ahmed, a warrior of the Bangladesh Liberation War. Another special thing is that she too had her early education at La Martiniere School. In this way both Paes and Nafisa have studied from the same school.

The second special thing is that she has been in politics for almost 20 years. She had contested from South Kolkata in 2004 and contested from Lucknow in 2009 on Samajwadi Party ticket and was doing politics with Congress after that. In this way Mamata broke another Congress leader into TMC fold.

However, the interesting thing about Mamata’s Goa politics is that she invited the famous Goan leader and former Chief Minister Luizinho Flerio to Kolkata and made him join TMC but she went to Goa to get Bengalis included in her party! Wouldn’t it be nice if she would have travelled to Goa for Luizinhe Flario and get Paes and Nafisa to join the party in Kolkata!