‘Mamata is part of I.N.D.I.A. because there is no other option for her. But her heart is not in it.’
KOLKATA
At about the time when Rahul Gandhi was asking 27 members of the I.N.D.I.A. combine to put up a united fight against the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the veteran leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, was in Dhupguri in north Bengal campaigning for the CPM candidate for the byelection to be held there on 5 September. While Rahul Gandhi was urging all Opposition parties to fight unitedly against the BJP, 2,000 km away, Chowdhury was asking the electorate not to vote for either the BJP or Trinamool Congress candidates, because “they are the same team”.
The distance between the two senior Congress leaders is not just physical but also metaphorical. Meanwhile, in Kolkata, Kunal Ghosh, the closest aide of Trinamool Congress heir apparent Abhishek Banerjee, was tweeting pictures of two CPM Politburo members. The composite picture showed Sitaram Yechury talking about a united front in Mumbai, while in Dhupguri, his compatriot Md. Selim was asking the people not to vote for the Trinamool Congress candidate.
Veteran journalist and avid political watcher Suman Chattopadhyay said: “If you read the official statement issued at the end of the I.N.D.I.A. meet, it says: ‘I.N.D.I.A parties will fight the BJP unitedly, as far as possible.’ The operative words are: ‘as far as possible’.”
“That is the only takeaway from the I.N.D.I.A. meeting for West Bengal. It is that whatever be the contours of the understanding in the rest of the country, in West Bengal, the Left and the Congress will fight both the TMC and the BJP. For the Left-Congress combine, the TMC is a bigger enemy than the BJP. Whatever happens in the rest of the country is of no concern.”
A senior Trinamool Congress leader, who has been a Lok Sabha member multiple times, told The Sunday Guardian: “Mark my word, Mamata is part of the I.N.D.I.A. combine because there is no other option for her. But her heart is not in it. Nor is she in a position, like Mayawati, to declare that the TMC will go solo.”
He explained that unlike the national parties, regional parties like the Trinamool have to win as many seats as possible in their own states in order to remain relevant. “Why should Mamata sacrifice her seats in Bengal to ensure that the I.N.D.I.A. bloc can give a fight to Prime Minister Narendra Modi?”, he asked, pointing out that multiple opinion polls have portrayed the BJP as the clear favourites for next year’s elections.
Md. Selim of the CPIM told The Sunday Guardian: “How can I tell my party men who are being tortured day in and day out by Mamata and her police and her goons for the past 12 years that they should vote for her? How can I tell the widows of those killed by her goons to vote for her? How can I tell the father of Anis Khan, our young comrade, who was killed by Mamata’s police, to vote for the Trinamool candidate? If we have to say that, that will be the end of the Left in West Bengal.”
Kaustav Bagchi, lawyer and upcoming Congress leader, said: “I have personally raised slogans against our senior party leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi appearing as a legal counsel for Trinamool leaders like Abhishek Banerjee. How can I support a party which has robbed Bengal and its youths since it came to power? Mark my words, if our party’s central leadership forces an understanding on us, we are going to go dormant. Congress is still alive in our state, though we have been out of power for almost 50 years. But this will sound the death knell for the Congress in West Bengal.”
“This I.N.D.I.A. thing is nothing but an eyewash,” says BJP’s state president Sukanta Majumdar, terming it as “kushti (wrestling) in Bengal, dosti (friendship) in Delhi and masti (fun) in Mumbai”. “The people know that the Opposition leaders are nothing but a bunch of thieves who are banding together to save their skins because Modiji, from the ramparts of the Red Fort, has sworn to fight against the corruption of these leaders,” he added.
Biswanath Chakraborty, political science professor at Rabindra Bharati University, said: “Mamata is not going to be accommodative in West Bengal because it is not in her interest. She will want other parties to sacrifice their seats in other parts of the country for the sake of the alliance, but will not do so in West Bengal. For the CPM and Congress, an alliance with the TMC will be suicidal. With signs that the Muslims may not vote en masse for Mamata, it is clearly the BJP which will have the advantage if it can overcome its own problems in its organisation. Clearly, in Winston Churchill’s words: ‘It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’.”