Ground realities make the idea a non-starter, say state leaders.
KOLKATA
At a time when the leaders of 26 Opposition parties showed grace and bonhomie during their meeting in Bengaluru to stitch together the I.N.D.I.A. combine, the on-ground realities point to the impracticality of the arrangement.
The host of the Bengaluru meeting—the Congress—went all out to give a pride of place to Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress chief, who is seen as one of the most important components of the anti-BJP front.
On Friday, Mamata Banerjee’s statement at her party’s annual Shaheed Dibas was being watched keenly by political observers across the country. Banerjee herself took pains to proclaim: “We do not care about power or post, we care about peace for our nation,” even as she launched an all-out attack on the BJP-led government at the Centre. She accused the Centre of trying to divide the nation as well as West Bengal.
“The BJP wants to break Bengal. They want to create fissures among Rajbongshis and Kamatapuris, between Hindus and Muslims, between north Bengal and south Bengal. If the BJP government returns to power in 2024, there will be no democracy in our country. The BJP wants to sell our country; I.N.D.I.A. wants to save our country.”
But the ground realities of West Bengal politics make the idea of I.N.D.I.A. an impossibility, at least in the state. Md. Selim, CPM Politburo member, said, “This is not going to work in West Bengal because there is no way we can explain to our members why we are allying ourselves with our biggest enemy.”
“Our cadres have been killed and hounded by Mamata and her goons and her police across the state from the time she came to power. Our young comrade Anis Khan was killed in his own home by Mamata’s police much before the panchayat elections. How can we explain any understanding with her to our supporters?” he asked.
He said that senior CPM leader Sitaram Yechury knew that this arrangement was not going to work in Bengal, but in the interests of the country, supported the idea.
Pradip Bhattacharya of the Congress, whose Rajya Sabha term ended last week, said: “Sometimes national parties like ours place national interests above local interests. But the booth-level worker who is suffering at the hands of the Trinamool Congress will not support this alliance.”
Koustav Bagchi of the Congress, who was arrested by Mamata Banerjee’s police on flimsy charges that were thrown out by the High Court, said: “Congress workers would prefer to sit at home than come out and work for this alliance, which brings no benefit to us.”
Soon after I.N.D.I.A. took shape in Bengaluru, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the veteran Congress leader from Bengal, who has managed to retain some space for the Congress in the state’s Murshidabad district, was said to be “heartbroken”. His close associates say that he is convinced that any understanding with Mamata Banerjee would be “suicidal” for the Congress
“The Trinamool Congress has always played deceitfully with us. It engineered the defection of our only MLA Bayron Biswas just three months after the Congress-Left combine defeated the TMC candidate, who was Mamata’s cousin, at Sagardighi. Our central leadership wants to reach an understanding with Mamata Banerjee to set up a united front against the BJP. The Congress Party will try to win India at the cost of its Bengal unit,” said Koustav Bagchi.
According to veteran political watcher Sikha Mukherjee, “Mamata Banerjee appears to have created two separate silos on how Opposition unity must work; the first silo is West Bengal where the TMC has to be given a free run; the second silo is the larger space outside the state. After the Karnataka election results, Mamata Banerjee had clarified that the TMC would not compete against the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections, where the older party was stronger and had better chances of winning. In other words, the TMC would not be a sheer spoiler, as it had been in states like Tripura or Goa, where it undercut the Congress but gained nothing from doing so.”
It’s a different matter that the TMC is non-existent outside the boundaries of West Bengal, and whether any votes come its way or not hardly matters in other states.
Suman Chattopadhyay, veteran journalist and avid political watcher, said: “Whether the alliance will work or not boils down to a simple question: How many seats out of West Bengal’s 42 seats will TMC give to the CPM and Congress in the Lok Sabha elections? For those of us who have seen Mamata over the years, we know she will not want to part with even a single seat in West Bengal. After all she has no relevance on the national stage without her numbers in Bengal.”
On its part, the BJP is enjoying the discomfiture of the West Bengal units of the CPM and the Congress. “Mark my word, the moment Mamata sees that she will have to make any sacrifice for the alliance to work, she will jettison it. For Mamata Banerjee, nothing matters more than self-preservation,” said Rahul Sinha, former national secretary of the BJP.