Quick to milk a farmer centric issue that once catapulted it to power post Singur and Nandigram movements the Trinamool Congress on Tuesday lapped up the alleged forced passage of farm bill in Rajya Sabha even as the party launched pan-Bengal demonstrations demanding an immediate rollback of the “black law.”

Cleverly mixing the farm bill with the amendment in essential commodities laws that has declassified a plethora of eatables including potato, onion --- which are already selling for a premium in the State --- edible oil and other items raising apprehensions of burning bigger holes in consumers’ pockets, the TMC leadership said the party would reach door-to-door driving home the “side effects of the BJP Government’s pro-rich reforms.”

This even as Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar queered the pitch with a no-holds-barred attack on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wondering why she stopped pro-farmer Kisan Sanman Nidhi, a central scheme that benefits the tillers from entering Bengal.

He accused the TMC supremo of blocking the passage of Rs 8,400 crore under Kishan Sanman Nidhi and was “shedding crocodile tears” on farm bill.

Senior TMC leaders including minister Chandrima Bhattacharya and MPs Saugato Roy and Kalyan Banerjee attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “hitting at the very base of the Indian economy.”

Bhattacharya said “first he half-murdered the economy by imposing the demonetisation which was a tricky scheme to convert black money into white money but in actuality it ruined the middle and small sector industry and sucked out crores of jobs. Then there was another foolish scheme of GST which was hurriedly implemented and massacred the market… and finally these two bills. The farm bill will break the back bone of the Indian economy --- perhaps hitting the farmers more than the British East India Company did.”

Bhattacharya was leading a sit-in protest in central Kolkata. Even as the BJP leadership desperately tried to reason out with the voters on the “good effects of the Bill” that will “free the farmers from the clutches of the middlemen,” the TMC along with the Left and the Congress roared back saying the bill was brought to compensate the business houses that fund the saffron outfit for the losses they suffered during the lockdown and sluggish market.

Processions were taken out in most of the districts, particularly the rural areas even as the TMC leadership said the intensity of the movement would only gather steam in the days to come.

Meanwhile, the Governor attacked the Chief Minister for shedding crocodile’s tears even as he tweeted “Urge CM - Crocodile Tears will not relieve pain of farmer,”

Subsequently in he told the media how Banerjee had denied the same farmers for whom she was crying now of benefits worth ? 8,400 crores which would go to 70 lakh Bengal farmers.

“So far every farmer has lost ? 12,000 that would have come to his bank account,” he tweeted, adding that farmers in other parts of the country had “enormously benefited” from the scheme. He also wrote how “Due to the inaction of Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal farmers have been denied the benefit of ? 30,000 crore of ? 3.5 lakh crores package by central government during the COVID pandemic.”

In the evening he followed his tweet with a frontal attack on the Chief Minister saying how a in a letter dated September 9 the State Government had requested the Centre to clear the Kisan Sanman Nidhi funds but with a rider. He said that the State asked the Centre to route the funds through the State Government officials including sending them directly to the farmers’ accounts.

Meanwhile, the TMC’s anti-farm bill agitation was complemented by parallel rallies by the Left and the Congress which took out processions condemning the twin laws --- the first one pushing the corporate into the farmers’ domain and the second robbing the common man of the shield against arbitrary hike in the prices of essential commodities.