No prizes for guessing who will be absent when two high-powered national committees headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meet on Thursday at his 7, Race Course Road residence. Quite expectedly, it will be Union railway minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee who will not be present when the two panels meet.
Ms Banerjee’s absence, though not unusual given her frequent and prolonged absences from the capital, will be ironic, for the two panels are supposed to chalk out the guidelines for celebrating the 150th birth anniversaries of two famous sons from the minister’s home state of West Bengal — Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda. While Gurudev’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations have already commenced, Swami Vivekananda’s 150th birth anniversary is in 2013.
Significantly, also expected to be present at the meetings is Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Mrs Gandhi’s name wasn’t on the two panels when the culture ministry had made the initial announcement regarding their constitution. Mrs Gandhi’s name was included just five days ago after the culture ministry issued an addenda to the original notification.
While officially there seemed to be no word from Ms Banerjee regarding her inability to attend the two meetings here tomorrow, Trinamul sources confirmed she would not be there when either of the two panels meet. Instead, they said that Ms Banerjee will be busy with political meetings in the run-up to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation polls.
scheduled for later this month.
While the national committee on Tagore will be meeting in the morning, the one on Swami Vivekananda is slated to meet in the evening. Among the panel members who have confirmed attendance at the meetings is a leader of the Trinamul’s bitter rival — Mr Sitaram Yechury of the CPI(M).
Indeed, there are whispers that Ms Banerjee is miffed about Mr Yechury’s inclusion in the panels and therefore has chosen to stay away when they meet. However, sources pointed out that Mr Yechury has been included in his capacity as the chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on culture.
The Tagore panel is expected to discuss the various proposals that have been received from institutions to mark Gurudev’s 150th birth anniversary. While Ms Banerjee will be absent, she is learnt to have thrown her weight behind a proposed documentary on Gurudev by filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh. She is also backing a proposal for the conservation of a house in London’s Hampstead Heath area where he lived for some time and is believed to have penned one of his most famous works, Geetanjali.