When BJP’s Agnimitra Paul saw her “god”—read Prime Minister Narendra Modi— for the first time she was mesmerized. It was, to quote her, a dream come true: a moment that she had waited for several years without knowing whether it would ever happen. But once it did, it was kind of unbelievable and one that remains etched in memory.
In 2019, Agnimitra actually designed a Modi-coat, white in colour with a quote of Rabindranath Tagore woven in. “It was hand embroidered in black thread. I travelled to Birbhum where Modi was addressing a gathering. I was backstage, waiting with the coat. He came and it was the first time that I saw him in person,” she said. She gifted him the coat and that for her was “the moment” when she came face to face with “her god”.
There were several times that she met Modi after that, but the feeling was similar. “It was like meeting my god for the first time. When I gave him the coat, I remember telling him that I wanted to work under his leadership…this is my dream. That is all I could say,” Agnimitra said in an interview given to a national daily recently.
Agnimitra is the only woman to be included in the newly formed BJP government in West Bengal. She was among the first five, so to speak, among those to be handpicked in the first round.
In one sense, she lost out because she was in the reckoning for the top job. If reports are anything to go by, she was among those being considered by the top brass to be sworn in as chief minister of the state the BJP had wrested from Mamata Banerjee—the first ever for the saffron party.
And how? Was it thanks to the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, “onslaught” where massive deletions cost the Trinamool Congress as the Opposition parties would wish the country to believe? Or was it misgovernance and large scale loot and corruption that cost Mamata and inflicted on her a defeat that she, perhaps, had never imagined. Either way, the elections are over, the results are out and the deed is done, so to speak.
On her part, Agnimitra is in seventh heaven, not because she is a minister, but because “her god”, the prime minister, knows her by name and actually shared stage when she took her oath as West Bengal’s first and only woman minister in the BJP government in the state. “Today my honourable prime minister knows me by name, he is on stage and I am able to take my oath in his presence, someone who is god to me, it is a dream come true. Nothing else matters except the fact that he knows me. That is enough and that is what I dreamt of…always,” she said.
Equally politics was not her calling. By her own admission, she had little patience to even listen to speeches delivered by politicians. “I have never been into politics, never interested. By profession, I am a designer and had a lucrative career with an impressive clientele,” she said.
And then the penny dropped. “One day, I heard Modi speak and that was it,” she said as she took the plunge. “I started following his work when he was chief minister and when I heard him speak for the first time, I decided that he is the person, I want to work under. He was my only inspiration. The way he spoke, his speeches…never before had I ever spent five minutes to listen to any other politician. I had no interest in politics,” she said. Modi was something else, she said, beaming like a child.
Her being enrolled as a member of the BJP coincided with Modi being sworn in as prime minister in 2014.
Agnimitra’s career trajectory is impressive. She has headed the BJP’s women wing in West Bengal, was elected MLA twice over, is now a minister and was even considered for chief ministership of the state.
Attribute this to her gender and Agnimitra said: “I don’t think being a woman helped. Even my enemies will tell you that I had put in my best. I worked 24×7 and even my critics would vouch that I deserved what I got. People are envious that I got the cabinet rank and I won the election, but they forget that I also lost two times in the past. I don’t know if people were envious then”.
But yes, this victory has put her in a formidable position and one that many would wish was theirs. The credit for this win, hers and the state’s, is thanks to Modi. “The way we won…what joy, what happiness. Everyone knows that the people voted for Modi and voted against Mamata and the misrule and atrocities of the TMC…the corruption, the cut money,” she said.
The tables have turned and now. The same cops who had let loose a reign of terror, stand in attention and salute her. “I was heckled, I was manhandled, there were tear gas shells, water guns and now the same men in uniform are in attendance…difficult to believe,” she said. Time certainly has come full circle for Agnimitra and her party.
From zero interest in politics to being a minister today, Agnimitra has come a long way. Today, she is adept in the game and nails the Opposition as she should.
Mention Mamata Banerjee, the outgoing chief minister who served two terms and was preparing for the third, and Agnimitra said: “In West Bengal, we worship goddesses more than we do the gods. It is a land of women and women liked Mamata Banerjee, but in the last few years, we saw atrocities on women. Every other day women were being tortured and there was no justice…no punishment for the perpetrators. What was worse was that we saw Mamata Banerjee siding with the rapist: a 14-year raped and killed in a birthday party that was organised by the son of a TMC leader and the ex-chief minister saying that this girl had an affair with the boy. She tried to cover up the case and demean the women and the victim. Many cases were reported every day, but these were the tip of the iceberg”. Things, said Agnimitra, were much worse and majority of the cases went unreported, and added that the RG Kar rape case was “the last nail in the coffin”.
For record, in 2024, a resident physician in RG Kar Medical hospital in Kolkata was raped and murdered on the premises. What followed was mayhem and sparked nationwide outrage. People were out on the streets demanding justice and slamming the state government, then headed by Mamata Banerjee, for attempting to destroy evidence.
“Everybody was on the road in protest and everybody knew that Mamata Banerjee was part of this…the way she tried to cover up the crime. The body was cremated in a haste and her parents were asked to take some money and keep their mouth shut. Everyone knows that there is more to it. People were on the roads. Kolkata has never seen such protests ever,” Agnimitra said.
On the SIR, being an electoral genocide, her take was: “I will not connect this to politics. The names that were deleted in my constituency were 54,000, but they were dead voters, absentee voters and duplicate voters and these names were being used by Mamata Banerjee and the TMC to cast bogus votes. So, if those names have been deleted or names of Rohingyas and Bangladeshi who are not our citizens struck off, then why would it be electoral genocide?
You can say what you want to confuse the people or peddle a false narrative. That is why Mamata Banerjee was opposed to the SIR because her voters were Rohingyas and Bangladeshis.”
As a designer when Agnimitra walked the ramp, the then women and child minister in the Mamata government was her show-stopper: “I was not in politics then. It is ironic that today I am holding the same position as hers”, Agnimitra said, signing off with a promise that a turnaround in the state that TMC headed and ruined, will happen under the BJP.
—The writer is an author, journalist and political commentator
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