For a leader who was so gung-ho about the I.N.D.I Alliance even a few weeks ago, Mamata Banerjee’s volte face regarding the Congress Party, the biggest constituent of the anti-BJP front, has taken many by surprise.
Her inflexible attitude, when give-and-take is the lifeblood of any electoral understanding, has taken the central leaders of the Congress Party by surprise. Though the Congress high command has adopted a placatory attitude, sources in the state unit say that this is the script that they had kept warning about.
State Congress leaders say that senior leader and Pradesh Congress Committee chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury had always been sceptical about the sincerity of the Trinamool Congress and its leader Mamata Banerjee’s commitment to the national alliance and had repeatedly warned party president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi.
“Adhir da never had any great hopes of the alliance succeeding. In fact, he was sure that Mamata Banerjee was the BJP’s Trojan horse whose sole intention was to create an implosion in order to paint the alliance in a poor light,” a long-time Adhir Chowdhury aide claimed to The Sunday Guardian.
“Mamata has to play to the BJP’s script. This is the price she has to pay to keep herself and her nephew out of jail now that it is clear how they were the masterminds and the beneficiaries behind all the corruption and scams in the state,” said Adhir Chowdhury.
In fact, the state unit of the Congress Party is blaming the Mamata Banerjee government for putting up hurdles in order to disturb Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra which is currently in West Bengal.
“Ever since the yatra commenced, we have been facing deterrents. In Manipur and Assam, we were not granted permission and even police were used to stop the yatra. After it reached Bengal, we sought permission for a public meeting in Siliguri and the administration denied it. We fail to understand why the administration here is not cooperating with us,” Adhir Chowdhury said.
This comes at a time when Mallikarjun Kharge and senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh have reached out to Mamata. But there is no sign that Mamata is ready to smoke the peace pipe any time soon.
Trinamool Congress sources say that Mamata Banerjee’s hard-line attitude is the result of several factors which have come up in the past few weeks.
The first is the Trinamool Congress’ belief that “the Congress needs us much more than we need the Congress”. This is borne out by the voting percentage in the last Assembly elections which reveals the Congress’ poor vote-catching ability.
In the 2021 Assembly elections, the Trinamool Congress polled 28,650,917 votes and got 47.93% vote share. The BJP on the other hand polled 22,798,411 votes and bagged a vote share of 38.1%. The CPI(M), which did not win a single seat polled 2,820,908 votes and managed a vote share of 4.72%. The Congress polled 1,757,148 and had a vote share of just 2.94%.
“The second is the Muslim factor”, a top-rung Trinamool Congress leader told The Sunday Guardian.
The Muslim vote-bank is the single-biggest reason for the Trinamool Congress holding on to power at all levels in the state.
In the 2021 Assembly elections, the Trinamool Congress’ 48% vote-share had a 23% component of Muslim votes. The rise of the Indian Secular Front (ISF) formed in West Bengal by Abbas Siddiqui, an influential Muslim cleric of the shrine of Furfura Sharif in Hooghly district, which aligned itself with the Left Front and the Congress Party had left Mamata worried, say Trinamool insiders.
Earlier, Mamata Banerjee’s biggest worry was that if the Congress, the Left Front and the ISF came together and aligned themselves against the Trinamool, then the Trinamool’s Muslim vote bank would get divided. That is why she was so desperate to be on the right side of the Congress high command in the initial days of the I.N.D.I. Alliance.
“Didi has now received intelligence reports that the high-decibel Ram Mandir inauguration by the BJP has caused widespread disquiet among the Muslims in the state. So, the chances of the Muslims again voting en masse for us has increased,” he added.
I-PAC, the political consultancy party, which is widely seen as the eyes and ears of Abhishek Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress’ number two and Mamata’s nephew, has also reached the same conclusion, a leader close to Abhishek said.
The third-most important factor has been the consolidation of the women votes behind the Trinamool Congress.
According to the Election Commission, women constitute over 49% of Bengal’s 7.5 crore electorate. The gender ratio of Bengal’s voters is 967 women for every 1,000 men.
The Trinamool Congress has reached out to the women voters by highlighting that most of the social development schemes run by the Mamata Banerjee government have benefited the women of the state.
To drive home that point, the Trinamool Congress’ Mahila Morcha started its outreach programme across the state on 22 December and it will run till 6 February.
“As a part of our 45-day outreach programme, the women’s wing of Trinamool Congress is highlighting the failures of the Central government in bringing any substantial improvement in the socio-economic conditions of the women and the BJP’s anti-women attitude during the massive campaign in the block level,” said Chandrima Bhattacharya, the party’s Mahila Morcha president.
In contrast, Bhattacharya also stressed upon the numerous women-centric schemes implemented by the Mamata Banerjee government.
“There are many initiatives targeting specific concerns like livelihood generation, skill development, and entrepreneurship for women.
“Apart from that, are programmes like Lakshmir Bhandar (which provides monthly financial assistance of Rs 500 for general-category women and Rs 1,000 for SC/ST/OBC women aged 25-60 years), old-age and widow pensions for senior citizens who are women. The Kanyashree Prakalpa offers a one-time grant of Rs 25,000 to girls from economically disadvantaged families upon reaching the age of 18, incentivizing education and marriage at a mature age. Even the Swasthya Sathi scheme which provides free health insurance coverage to all families in West Bengal is recorded in the name of the female member of a household.
“Didi has given love and respect to the women of Bengal. The women of Bengal will shower their blessings on Didi through the ballot box. Just wait and watch,” Bhattacharya told The Sunday Guardian.