Shantanu Thakur from Bengal likely to be inducted into Union Cabinet again
Shantanu Thakur, a Matua leader, won West Bengal’s Bongaon seat for the second time in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls
All India Matua Mahasangha leader and former Union minister of state for shipping, Shantanu Thakur, who won the North 24 Parganas district’s reserved Bongaon seat for the second time in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, is likely to be inducted into the Modi 3.0 Cabinet.
Thakur, 41, wrested the Bongaon seat from his aunt and Matua leader Mamata Bala Thakur of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in 2019. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) entrusted Shantanu Thakur to win the confidence of the Matua community.
Unlike other Hindu Dalit communities who are categorised as Scheduled Caste (SC), the Matuas are a religious sect formed by social reformer Sri Harichand Thakur (1812-1878), who is worshipped in temples as an incarnate of Vishnu. Most of these people came from East Pakistan during Partition and from Bangladesh after the 1971 Liberation war as refugees to escape religious persecution.
Before the 2019 polls, in which BJP set a record by winning 18 of Bengal’s 42 seats, it promised to enforce the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to secure the confidence of the Namasudras, of whom the Matuas are a part. CAA was enforced in March with TMC opposing it.
Although a census on the Matuas was never done, the community claim to have more than 10 million members across India.
Among the seats with pockets of Namasudra and Matua population that BJP wrested in 2019 are Bongaon, Hooghly, Cooch Behar, Malda North, Ranaghat, Burdwan-Durgapur, Jalpaiguri and Raiganj. The BJP lost the Hooghly, Cooch Behar and Burdwan-Durgapur seats in the recent polls.
With Shantanu Thakur by his side, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Bangladesh on the eve of the 2021 Bengal assembly polls. Modi offered prayers at the Matua temple at Orakandi, where Sri Harichand Thakur was born. Shantanu Thakur was made a Union minister in 2021 after BJP won several assembly seats having Matua population.
With only 75 of Bengal’s 294 assembly seats in its kitty, BJP, however, ended the race far away from its target of winning 200.
Shantanu Thakur’s biggest challenge in the recent Lok Sabha polls was to counter TMC chairperson Mamata Banerjee’s relentless opposition to CAA.
Since a large number of refugees from Bangladesh do not have official documents from that country, the Mahasangha proposed in March that the Centre should add new clauses to the CAA rules.
Sharp divisions surfaced in the Thakur family in 2014 when Kapil Krishna Thakur, Shantanu Thakur’s uncle who won the Bongaon Lok Sabha seat in 2014 on a TMC ticket, died five months after the Lok Sabha polls held that year.
Shantanu Thakur’s father Manjul Krishna Thakur wanted one of his two sons to contest the vacant seat but TMC fielded Kapil Krishna Thakur’s wife Mamata Bala Thakur who emerged as winner. Manjul Krishna Thakur joined BJP with his sons. Shantanu Thakur wrested the Bongaon seat in 2019.
