Deepa Dasmunshi, the Union Minister of State for Urban Development, was ridiculed by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) for copying Mamata Banerjee’s style of registering protests. She rode pillion towards Writers’ Building on a motorbike with Congress workers to protest against the state government’s decision to relocate a proposed AIIMS hospital from her Lok Sabha constituency of Raiganj in north Bengal to TMC’s bastion in Nadia district.
In the middle of the march, Dasmunshi suddenly hopped on a bike and zipped off, but not before pausing for a moment to pose for shutterbugs. Comparing Dasmunshi to clones of Kishore Kumar, Manna De and Lata Mangeshkar, the state panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee said, “There is an attempt to do a remake of Mamata Banerjee’s style by riding on a bike to the state secretariat.”
As an Opposition leader, Mamata used to frequently alight from her car to take a motorbike during her rallies. “It is not easy to become Mamata,” said Mukherjee. As a Youth Congress leader in 1993, Mamata rode pillion on a scooter to go to Writers’ to meet the former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu after 13 Congress workers were shot dead by the police during a rally at Maidan. Even former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya was seen atop a motorbike during a recent Left Front rally in Kolkata.