Mamata’s Banerjee's meet with Sourav Ganguly on his birthday sets off political buzz

Ganguly has been maintaining a low profile since the Bengal elections

ITDC INDIA EPRESS/ITDC NEWS R On Thursday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee visited BCCI president Sourav Ganguly at his home to greet him on his 49th birthday. As pictures from the meeting went viral, social media is abuzz with political speculations.

Earlier, there were speculations the former cricketer would join the BJP.

It is not the first time that Banerjee has visited Ganguly. She visited him in January this year when the former Indian cricket captain was hospitalised after he complained of chest pain. This time, however, Banerjee’s meeting with Ganguly has grabbed eyeballs.

Though Ganguly received birthday wishes from many politicians, including those from the BJP on social media, there were few exceptions. Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar who is known to tweet wishes to eminent personalities, did not wish Ganguly on Twitter. Ganguly had met the governor a couple of times last year at his residence. It is not known if Ganguly received birthday phone calls from BCCI secretary Jay Shah, home minister Amit Shah or even Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The prime minister and home minister usually do not greet anybody over Twitter.

Banerjee is passing through a critical phase of her political life. She has written nine letters about various issues to the prime minister. However, she has not received a reply to any of them. The PMO has not even sent a letter of acceptance. In the letters, Banerjee has addressed demands of her state, political decisions of the Union government and various other issues like rising fuel prices.

Ganguly, on the other side, has been maintaining a low profile since the Bengal elections. He is has mostly been talking about cricket and has not been active on social media even. Though her has had cordial relations with Union home minister Amit Shah, the BJP had expected he would join the party before the elections to strengthen the party’s image, and improve poll prospects. That, however, did not happen. His reluctance to endorse the party in Bengal may have upset the central leadership.

Another Bengali star, Mithun Chakraborty, however, did things differently. Chakraborty also had a huge fan following like Ganguly. Chakraborty, an ex-TMC MP campaigned for the BJP during the assembly election. Now, a criminal case has been slapped against Chakraborty for repeating one of his iconic film dialogues—Marbo ekhane, lash porbe soshane (will hit you here and the body will land in the crematorium)—in the BJP rallies time and again. Let alone sending him birthday wishes this month, Banerjee's state police interrogated the former Bollywood superstar for seven hours on his birthday over video conference. Chakraborty, sources said, told the police, “I also said the same dialogue in the election campaign for TMC in 2014. Why was there no case against me then?”