Didi deflects flyover flak, but will it help?

KOLKATA: Like every day , Gulab Chand Mali was selling paraphernalia at his small `paan' shop near Kolkata's Posta Kali temple on Thursday morning.
He was a happy and a busy man. From decorations for a grand reception to distributing invitation cards, Gulab was micro-managing everything three weeks ahead of his son Vikas's wedding. Swirling crowds on Kali Krishna Tagore Street talked death and gore on Friday .This was where an underconstruction flyover collapsed killing more than 20 a day earlier. Voices animatedly discussing the "manmade" tragedy worried TMC strategists. As if Saradha and Narada weren't enough to make what had appeared to be a smooth poll run bumpy , the accident added to complications.
Making matters worse, grainy images of the muchdelayed flyover crashing on stop-and-go, rush-hour traffic played in a loop on news television -bad optics in election time. Mamata Banerjee, realising the need to contain the damage with a human and political response, got into action within hours. She rushed to the disaster site and blamed it all on the previous Left government.
Camping a short distance away from ground zero, she told reporters the project had been launched when the Left Front government was in office. It was initiated in 2008, construction began in 2009. The Hy derabad firm executing the project hadn't shared the designs with her government despite repeated reminders, she claimed.
This tack could come handy in pinning the Left on the defensive and deflecting the blame onto veteran Asok Bhattacharya, who could well prove a hurdle for Trinamool in North Bengal. It was he who had halted the Left slide when his rainbow coalition helped CPM win the civic polls in the north Bengal town of Siliguri. It was on his watch as urban development minister that the pro ject was commissioned.
But Bhattacharya immediately struck back. Speaking in Siliguri, he suggested the quality of ma terial used may have been compromised. He wondered what urban development minister Firad Hakim had been doing all this while."Why did he allow the tainted company continue with the work, what was he doing," he asked pointedly. But despite the CM's attempts to seize the initiative and blame it all on the previous government, the mood on the streets wasn't favourable. Some reports talked of Trinamool functionaries getting heckled and booed.Firad Hakim, whom the CM banks on, also drew flak. On Friday, in at least two Kolkata assembly seats -Jorasanko and Shyampukur -TMC councillors went around meeting bereaved families. But their efforts hardly comforted those who had lost near ones.
On Sovaram Basak Street, an elderly citizen said: "This is another instance of corruption after Narada. Find out who supplied such substandard material to the builder" -his reference was to a supply firm owned by someone close to TMC.
All through Friday, rumours raced around town of faulty engineering, corrupt practices and use of poor materials. There was also talk of the tearing rush to complete a project hobbled by delays.These seemed to work to the advantage of poll rivals, who have been attacking the ruling party over the Narada and Saradha scams.