West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s announcement to opt for a post-poll formulation between regional parties instead of contesting the Lok Sabha elections as part of the opposition INDIA bloc has put the Congress party in the spot of bother. Without Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) on board, the INDIA bloc would appear weak compared to Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from the very beginning of the electoral battle.
Banerjee’s wording also made political observers wonder if she was reflecting the sentiments of other regional parties like Uttar Pradesh’s Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) with regard to Delhi, Punjab, and Gujarat.
Notably, just a few hours after Banerjee’s comments, AAP’s Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwat Mann announced the party will have no alliance with Congress in Punjab.
“At the national level, we will decide after the elections. We are a secular party. We will do whatever is required to defeat the BJP. But there is no talk with them (Congress). It’s all baseless,” Banerjee said on Wednesday when asked about an alliance with the Congress in the state.
Asked if she would continue to be part of the INDIA bloc, Banerjee said, “The alliance does not belong to any party. We, regional parties, stay together. We said that they (Congress) alone should contest 300 seats and let the regional parties fight in the rest. They need not interfere with the space of the regional parties.”
Banerjee’s remarks came less than 24 hours after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that talks with the TMC were still on and he was hopeful of reaching an agreement.
“The seat negotiations are on and will conclude. I don’t want to comment on it from here,” Gandhi said on Tuesday, adding that he personally as well as his party enjoys a good relationship with Banerjee.
On Wednesday, the TMC chief rubbished the claim. “I have had no discussion with anyone. They rejected our proposal on the very day we gave it. Since then, our party has decided that we will go it alone in West Bengal,” said Banerjee.
The proposal was leaving two of the state’s 42 seats to the Congress — the ones that Congress won on its own in 2019. While the Congress state leadership rubbished the idea, the TMC argued that the 2021 assembly election trend indicates the Congress is not in a position to retain even these two on its own.
Banerjee’s mention of drawing a national-level strategy after the elections is a revival of her old stand of a ‘federal front’ — a proposed alliance of regional forces that she has been promoting since 2015. The idea of an anti-BJP alliance without Congress did not materialise though. The TMC has been part of the new opposition unity initiative, INDIA, right from the beginning.
The TMC chief first indicated distancing from the INDIA bloc on Monday, when she alleged that the CPI(M), her archrival, was controlling its meetings. Having fought the CPI(M) for 34 years of its rule, she could not have heeded them, Banerjee said.
From the same event, Banerjee also alleged that the Congress had rejected her proposal of fighting alone in 300 Lok Sabha seats, letting the regional parties fight the BJP on their own in their strongholds.
Gandhi on Tuesday tried to downplay Banerjee’s remarks. He said, “Things like this do happen. Sometimes someone from their side or our side says a thing or two. This is natural. These are not things that are doing to disrupt anything.”
Some TMC leaders who spoke to Outlook on condition of anonymity blamed Bengal Congress President Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury’s consistent, high-pitched opposition to the state’s TMC rule for Banerjee’s hardened anti-Congress stand.
They highlighted how Chowdhury, who is also the leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha, addressed a press conference on Tuesday barely a few hours after Gandhi told the media about seat sharing negotiations being still on. In that press meet, Chowdhury hit out at Banerjee and said that they did not want to contest in alliance with the TMC.
“She is using the CPI(M) as an excuse. If CPI(M) was trying to control INDIA, why did she not protest then and there and walk out of the meeting?” Chowdhury asked. He even called Banerjee an “opportunist” and alleged that she was trying to ensure dividing the votes between the BJP and her party so that both the BJP and the TMC may benefit.
“This cannot continue that on one hand the Congress top leadership would want us to be with them, while on the other their state leaders would continue criticising us in the BJP’s tone and make unrealistic demands,” said a senior TMC leader.
On Wednesday, Banerjee also expressed her dissatisfaction at not getting informed about Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra entering West Bengal. “They are doing this rally. But have they, as a matter of courtesy, informed me that Didi, we are going to your state? We are an INDIA alliance partner! No, they did not. Therefore, they have no relation with me regarding Bengal.”
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Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra is entering West Bengal on January 25. The rally will travel to parts of northern West Bengal and enter Bihar on January 29. Of Congressp party’s two Lok Sabha seats from Bengal, one is in north Bengal’s Malda and the other in the adjacent Murshidabad district.
Following Banerjee’s outburst, the Congress central leadership again tried to cool things down. “TMC is a pillar of the INDIA alliance. We cannot imagine the INDIA alliance without Mamata ji,” said Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh, who is travelling with Gandhi’s Yatra. He still sounded hopeful of a solution that would satisfy all sides.
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“I have great respect for Mamata ji. She said her primary focus is to defeat the BJP. Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra will enter Cooch Behar with the same mission tomorrow,” he said.
A Bengal Congress veteran said, requesting anonymity, that the party’s central leadership believed forging alliances with parties like the TMC, SP, and AAP would be more beneficial from the national perspective in presenting an alternative to Modi rule. An alliance with the TMC would have also saved the party from the difficult situation of fighting the Left in Kerala and allying with them in Bengal.
“However, the Bengal leadership always conveyed its understanding that allying with the TMC would be politically harmful from the state unit’s perspective, as our existing support base is among anti-TMC voters,” the leader said.
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Whether Congress top leadership agrees to make more ‘sacrifices’ to keep INDIA bloc intact as they go to the elections remains to be seen.
