In her new book, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has squarely blamed Congress for the BJP’s return to power at the Centre for the third consecutive term in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

As per her observations in the book, despite wholehearted attempts by the Trinamul Congress, the opposition INDIA bloc was unable to gain electoral success because of the failure on the part of Congress.

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“We earnestly wanted a strong opposition bloc against BJP at the national level combining all anti-BJP forces. Since the beginning, we had insisted on a common minimum programme and common manifesto. The name of the opposition bloc too was my proposal. Congress was offered the chair of the leader of the national bloc. But despite that, there was neither a common minimum programme nor any common manifesto. The bloc constituents contested between themselves. This helped BJP to regain power even without gaining a majority,” Chief Minister wrote in her book.

Published by Dey’s Publishing, of the three books two are in Bengali, namely, Lipiboddho Kichu Kaj and Banglar Nirbachan O Amra while Salute 2 which was originally in Bengali has been translated into English. Miss Banerjee has so far written around 156 books.

Banglar Nirbachan O Amra gives in detail the history of Trinamul Congress. She has explained in detail what had prompted her to set up Trinamul Congress on 1 January, 1998. As Youth Congress president she found that Congress was serious about launching a political movement against the CPM. She had contested for the post of WBPCC president and was defeated following a conspiracy against her. Trinamul Congress’ long journey and how it had successfully put an end to 34 years of Left Front rule in Bengal in 2011 and the party’s success in the Assembly and Parliament elections and the by-elections since then has been written about. In Lipiboddho Kichu Kaj she has talked about her work as the Union railway minister and then as the chief minister of Bengal. There is a chapter titled an ‘Era of Development’ where she has discussed various projects taken since 2011 which include women empowerment and other development projects.

Young writer Saikat Neogy’s book Kolkatar Pret Katha published by Parul Boi has created a ripple among the readers. Rabindranath Tagore used to do planchette regularly. Swami Abhedananda, one of the disciples of Sri Ramakrishna used to planchette and later wrote about life after death. The books discuss in detail about the involvement of important personalities in doing planchette.

Goyendapith Lalbazar penned by Supratim Sarkar, ADG South Bengal is an interesting book. Published by Ananda the book discusses the role of the detective department in solving important cases.