As a cricketer, Yusuf Pathan was never the chirpy kind. His bat did all the talking. Politics, however, is a different pitch altogether. And Pathan, now a Trinamool Congress MP from Bengal’s Berhampore, finds himself on a sticky political wicket.
With TMC chief Mamata Banerjee losing her grip over both her legislators and parliamentarians, Pathan is caught between a rock and a hard place.
Pathan, for one, has kept his cards close to his chest. Like several of his party colleagues, he has neither publicly backed nor criticised Mamata Banerjee’s leadership as the crisis within the party continues to unfold.
On Monday, as Mamata Banerjee deliberated on opposition unity at the INDIA bloc meeting inside Delhi’s Constitution Club, her own party was fracturing in plain sight a few blocks away.
The first crack in the party’s parliamentary wing came with the resignation of TMC veteran and Rajya Sabha chief whip Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, one of Mamata’s most trusted aides.
What followed was a rapid succession of political signals: a closed-door meeting between Roy and rebel TMC Lok Sabha MPs, and then a rendezvous with Mamata’s bete noire, Suvendu Adhikari, at Union minister Bhupender Yadav’s residence in Delhi — a clear indication that the Bengal mutiny had reached the national capital.
By the end of the day, TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar claimed that at least 20 of the party’s 28 MPs were keen to break away from Mamata Banerjee’s outfit and join the NDA.
But her inclusion of Yusuf Pathan among the alleged rebels sent ripples through the party, drawing flak from loyalists such as Mahua Moitra, one of the few TMC leaders to publicly and unequivocally back Mamata amid the crisis.
“Our district voted you in by a huge margin. Have some shame and some spine,” Mahua lashed out at Pathan as he landed in Delhi on Monday afternoon.
Mahua went a step further, claiming that Pathan was allegedly rushing to New Delhi after being summoned by Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Not known for leaving balls outside his off stump as a cricketer, Pathan has chosen to give Mahua’s fiery volleys the silent treatment. He has neither confirmed Kakoli’s claim that he is headed to the rival camp nor suggested that he is set to join the NDA fold.
For his constituency, which has a Muslim population of over 50 per cent and has historically voted for non-NDA parties, the silence is even more deafening.
While he has dismissed reports that Sourav Ganguly was carrying TMC’s message urging him to vacate his seat for Mamata Banerjee, Pathan is slowly learning that silence may no longer be his best ally.
As questions mount and fingers are pointed, it is only a matter of time before Yusuf Pathan is forced to come clean on where his loyalties lie.
After all, Pathan cannot rely on silence to carry him through this storm the way it arguably did when his constituency burned during last year’s communal riots.
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