With Mamata Banerjee’s announcement on Wednesday that her Trinamool Congress would run alone in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Chief Minister’s effort at a “marriage of convenience” with the Congress in West Bengal may very well be gone.
Banerjee’s accusation that the Congress had “rejected all her seat-sharing proposals” put an end to the tense silence between the two INDIA bloc allies. She also announced that the Trinamool would run for all 42 seats in Bengal.
The Trinamool chief’s harsh adversary, state Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, intensified his criticism on Banerjee, labelling her as “dalal” on one occasion and a “opportunist” on another.
Just one day before Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra was scheduled to visit West Bengal, the bomb finally went off on Wednesday.
The ambiguity surrounding Trinamool in Congress has never been a secret. Although Mamata Banerjee and Sonia Gandhi get along well, she has faced criticism from the Bengal Congress branch, which is led by Adhir Chowdhury and Abdul Mannan.
State Congress leaders have always been apprehensive about the Congress’s national dalliance with Mamata Banerjee. The Trinamool has been blamed by the state unit for weaning away its leaders, and Mamata’s party is mostly to blame for the party’s devastation in the state.
Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury actually preferred to go with the Left and was not in favour of making an alliance with the Trinamool in the first place.
Not that the Congress and TMC haven’t worked together before. In the 2001 Bengal Assembly election and the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the two parties have previously partnered. Significantly, after 34 years in power, the CPI(M)-led Left Front administration in Bengal was overthrown by the TMC and Congress coalition in 2011.
But this time, things were different.
The Trinamool Congress apparently urged Congress to run for two of the 42 seats in Bengal, rejecting their desire for at least 8–10 seats, which was the first indication of discontent.
The two seats that the Congress had won in 2019 were Malda South and Berhampore, the stronghold of Adhir Ranjan.
Mamata Banerjee wants the seat-sharing mechanism to be determined by how well the parties did in the West Bengal polls in 2021 and the Lok Sabha election in 2019. According to Trinamool, Congress received less than five percent of the vote in the Assembly polls and did not win a single seat.
The leader of the TMC has suggested that the Congress give up its right to act as “big brother” and allow local parties to handle elections in their constituencies.
“You contest alone in 300 other seats. We will help. But they say they will do as they wish. Just keep one thing in mind, do not help the BJP. If you help the BJP, Allah kasam, no one will forgive you. I will never forgive you,” Banerjee had said.
However, a dogged Adhir Chowdhury was in no mood to step back and called it her “bahana” (excuse) to divide the vote between “Modi and Didi”. Mamata Banerjee is also fondly called “Didi” in Bengal, meaning elder sister.
The situation escalated when the top leadership of the Trinamool Party agreed to run for all 42 seats, including Adhir Chowdhury’s Berhampore, during a meeting last week. Since 1999, Chowdhury has been the winner of the Berhampore seat.
The Congress became alarmed after Chowdhury referred to Banerjee as an opportunist and declared that the party will run for the Lok Sabha election without her support.
“This time, the elections will not be fought at the mercy of Mamata Banerjee. The Congress party knows how to contest the elections. Mamta Banerjee is an opportunist; she came to power in 2011, with the mercy of Congress,” Adhir said.
The harm was already done. Rahul Gandhi tried to appease Banerjee on Tuesday by claiming that Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury’s remarks wouldn’t matter because he was close to the chief minister of Bengal.
Gandhi said to the media while on the fringes of his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, “I am extremely close to Mamata Banerjee. Our leaders occasionally speak up. Such remarks won’t be significant.
Mamata Banerjee cancelled the coalition the following day. When the “Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra,” led by Rahul Gandhi, arrives in West Bengal on January 25, it is also improbable that the Trinamool Congress will accompany it.
Minutes after Banerjee’s remarks, seasoned Congressman Jairam Ramesh extended an olive branch, stating that they could not envision I.N.D.I.A. without TMC; nonetheless, it appears that the harm has already been done.
