Kolkata : After the Messi mess incident at the Saltlake Stadium, Begal sports minister has resigned from his post and the Mamata Banerjee govt on Tuesday accepted the same, the portfolio, till the end of enquiry, will be with the CM. Aroop Biswas, who was seen hugging Lionel Messi and whose family members were seen taking photographs with the soccer superstar on Saturday during the botched-up extravaganza, has been widely pilloried as being the face of the Messi mess.
As per news reports, TMC Party seniors say there was growing pressure on Trinamool and Biswas to “do something”, given his “direct” role in the fiasco and his clan’s widely documented presence around the football icon. The paying public erupted in anger 20 minutes into the event, with thousands first booing the phalanx of politicians and organisers who prevented the gallery from seeing Messi properly. Many of the angry spectators, who had paid between Rs 5,000 and Rs 16,000 for a ticket, uprooted chairs and used them as missiles, stormed the playing area, tore up tents and nets, shattered the fibreglass roof of the players’ tunnel and finally carried off flower pots, carpets and furniture in an act of vandalism Kolkata has rarely seen.
Trinamool seniors said Biswas’s position as sports minister had become untenable and this would have proved a burden to the party in the assembly poll due next year. The move, say party seniors, may go some way in stemming public anger and deflecting much of the opposition criticism. “If the face of the mess has been partially ‘sacrificed’, who will they gun for? How will the opposition say the administration did not act?” asked a senior cabinet minister, explaining the rationale behind the resignation offer and its prompt acceptance, however “partial” it might have been.
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