Is Mamata Banerjee going for an image makeover over Covid-19 flak?

Banerjee hinted at her going missing from addressing the press conferences over Covid-19 first on Apr 27, days after her party's political strategist Prashant Kishor landed in Kolkata.

As rumours were strong that Kishor was guiding Banerjee with administrative advices, the CM on Apr 27 formed a cabinet committee comprising her top ministers and officials saying she needed to concentrate on other governmental works besides Covid.

The TMC government, which was widely appreciated for its preventive measures to tackle Covid-19 in March with Banerjee hitting the streets and teaching the practice of social distancing, soon started earning negative reviews early in April when chief secretary Sinha disapproved a government team of medical doctors' claim that the death toll was then seven.

Sinha within hours held a press conference and claimed the toll was three.

People of West Bengal saw no press conference in the successive days over Covid prompting the opposition parties to step up and question the government over its pandemic handling.

Also the government was not ready to provide the total number of cases leading the journalists to revisit the subject of mathematics to understand the Covid tally of the politically-charged state.

Leaving behind the criticisms from the Opposition, Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar and the confrontation with the Inter-Ministerial Central Teams, the TMC government took a surprising step recently by mentioning not mistakenly the total number of cases in a letter to the central government, raising eyebrows of many.

In late April, amid a series of allegations raised by the opposition parties that West Bengal government is hiding Covid-19 data, a Coronavirus figure provided by state principal health secretary, Vivek Kumar, showed that 931 Covid positive cases were reported in Bengal till 30th of the last month.

In another attempt to an image makeover, chief secretary Sinha admitted earlier this week that the government had missed out some Covid data.

While the CM herself, who was earlier seen drawing circles on roads trying to teach social distancing though many alleged that she hardly followed it herself, went missing from regular press conferences and public appearances, Sinha was replaced by the state's home secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay during the regular bulletins.

Though the Mamata Banerjee government is still firm in not including the co-morbidity deaths in the toll, Sinha in his last press conference agreed to the central government's overall Covid tally. 

Accusing Banerjee of eloping from the situation, CPI-M leader Sujan Chakraborty told IBNS, "She is shying away. Since the chief secretary's exposure also has been made clearly, now primarily the Chief Minister and then the chief secretary also are shying away.

"By saying she was not in the knowledge of the expert committee (audit committee which claimed 105 people had died in the state), the CM is putting the entire blame out of her shoulder and putting it on someone else. That is the simple approach or reason."

"It is only exception in Bengal where the Health Ministry or health department is having no voice..... So there is no scientific approach. It is presumed that whether the Health Minister or health secretary themselves are in quarantine. They were not seen anywhere. Now for no reason, the home secretary is briefing instead of the chief secretary or the health secretary. So neither the state as a whole nor the health as a department is briefing," the Jadavpur MLA added terming the Covid figures furnished by home secretary Bandyopadyay too as fudged.

Meanwhile, the medical advisory body of the Mamata government also came under scrutiny for the track records of their key members.

The induction of octogenarian physician Sukumar Mukherjee, a doctor tainted in the landmark Anuradha Saha medical negligence case, was called out by the late woman's husband and medical negligence fighter, US-based Kunal Saha.

Saha, who set up patients' body People for Better Treatment (PBT), soon challenged the track records of other members of the "Global Advisory Board" set up by Bengal pointing out inclusion of Thomas R Frieden of USA, who had pled guilty to sexual misconduct in New York, and a Kolkata doctor pulled up by the Medical Council of India (MCI) for taking a dog for dialysis in state-run SSKM Hospital in 2015.

(Images: UNI, Avishek Mitra/IBNS)