Earlier, in April that year, a Jadavpur University professor was beaten by Trinamool goons and arrested for circulating a cartoon of Banerjee and two of her colleagues. Her police force slapped serious charges on him and Banerjee went to the extent of saying the professor was involved in a murder conspiracy against her. That was not the only time she imagined plots to murder her; she has spun such conspiracy theories many times. The most hilarious among such incidents was the one involving her flight from Patna to Kolkata in December last year. The flight hovered over Kolkata for quite some time due to traffic congestion, prompting her and her party to allege a failed assassination attempt . “Only a megalomaniac without any scruples can cook up such an allegation to gain attention and create a hype,” said the psychologist.

Banerjee does not brook even the presence of political opposition in Bengal. She has systematically deployed her cadres and musclemen to decimate the opposition. Opposition leaders and activists have been threatened, physically assaulted and even murdered. False cases have allegedly been slapped on many opposition leaders. Many of them have been bought over by allurements or threats of being implicated in false cases. Congress leader Manas Bhunia, for instance, was named accused in the murder of a Trinamool worker last year, but his name was dropped from the chargesheet after he joined the Trinamool a few months later. He has now won a Trinamool Congress nomination for a Rajya Sabha seat.

One of her first acts of highhandedness after becoming Chief Minister was the shunting of IPS officer Damayanti Sen who persevered and solved the Park Street rape case that Banerjee had tried to dismiss as a fabricated one aimed at maligning her government. Sen was targeted because she had chosen to act professionally and investigate the case even after Banerjee’s open signal that the case should be left alone.

In August 2012, a farmer from West Midnapore who had put uncomfortable questions to Banerjee at a public rally was slapped with non-bailable cases and put behind bars . The farmer, Shiladitya Chaudhury, had asked her about the high prices of fertilizers. Mamata promptly dubbed him a Maoist and asked the police to take action.

Former Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju wrote an open letter to the Chief Minister accusing her of intolerance. Katju had written: “You seem to have become increasingly intolerant and whimsical, which is only going to land you in big trouble. From what I could gather during my visit to Kolkata, your ministers and bureaucrats are afraid to speak out their minds fearlessly before you and are terrorised by your unpredictable and whimsical behaviour”.

Katju was spot on. No member of her council of ministers can muster the courage to voice a contrary opinion. No one contradicts Banerjee, even when she is wrong (which is very often). No minister or bureaucrat has the guts to disobey any order given by her, no matter how unconstitutional it may be. She abuses anyone who angers her, no matter who he is. Banerjee is the law and they have to follow her. There are numerous examples of the Chief Minister having shunted out and punished those who have dared to follow the law of the land and Constitutional propriety and disregarded her advice or orders.

It is, thus, supremely ironical that Banerjee is held up as an icon by the ‘liberals’ (read: pro-Congress and communist civil society members). They seem to have conveniently forgotten her past sins and, for the sake of their own petty interests, thrown their weight behind her for the only reason that she speaks so raucously against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party. But no matter what, at the end of the day, Banerjee will remain intolerant, mercurial and undemocratic. No amount of whitewashing can obliterate those ugly and prominent stains that mar her persona.