With the dust settling on the bitterly contested West Bengal Assembly elections, discussions have shifted to the Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s forays into other States, its attack on the Congress leadership, and the question of Opposition unity. An immediate question is whether the Congress and TMC can declare a truce and work together to achieve Opposition unity. The mistrust between the Congress and the TMC has come to the fore a number of times in the past few months, particularly when the TMC leadership was reaching out to the electorate in Goa or meeting key leaders of other political parties like the Nationalist Congress Party and the Shiv Sena.
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The differences between the two parties are rooted in the politics of West Bengal. The Congress and TMC in West Bengal have a complicated relationship. Mamata Banerjee set up a new party in 1998 as she felt that the Congress was not serious enough to take on the Left parties. Both the parties, however, came together in an alliance in 2011 to end the 34-year-old CPI(M)-led Left Front rule and Ms. Banerjee assumed the office of Chief Minister. The TMC supported the UPA-II government, and its leaders were part of the Union Council of Ministers. Therefore, Ms. Banerjee’s recent remarks that the UPA is “dead” were enough to evoke strong reactions from the Congress leadership.
The unease also stems from differences between Ms. Banerjee and West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. With the rise of the TMC, the space which the Congress occupied in the politics of West Bengal slowly diminished. West Bengal is a unique case of the winner taking control of everything and the Opposition parties struggling to manage a civic body or a gram panchayat even in remote corners of the State.
The shrinking Opposition space resulted in regular defections of Congress leaders to the TMC from 2011. This has forced the Grand Old Party to align with the Left parties.
It is not that the Congress and TMC have not tried to reach out to each other. After the Assembly polls, the Congress tried to extend an olive branch to the TMC by not fielding a candidate against Ms. Banerjee when she contested from Bhabanipur. The TMC helped nominate Congress leaders such as Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Pradip Bhattacharya to the Rajya Sabha. But despite these attempts, there has been no truce between the two parties in the State in the last 10 years.
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The TMC cannot rule out the Congress as a binding force of all the Opposition parties. If the TMC attempts to occupy the space of the principal Opposition on the national stage, it is going to help the BJP. The TMC may have defeated the BJP juggernaut in West Bengal, but its support base is primarily composed of Bengali speakers.
In West Bengal, the Congress too should work more at the grassroots level to bring to the fore senior leaders who are now in political isolation. It needs to rejuvenate its cadres in erstwhile bastions instead of indulging in regular bickering with the TMC. To take on the BJP in 2024, the two parties have to first mend fences in the State. The civic polls provide an opportunity for this. By allowing Congress candidates to contest these elections and not engineer defections, the TMC can set the record straight. The TMC’s political dominance in West Bengal at this moment can only be compared to that of the CPI(M)-led Left Front when it was at its political peak. Attempts by the ruling party to occupy every inch of the political space using fear and coercion may not bode well for the State and may hamper prospects of Opposition unity for the 2024 general elections.
shivsahay.s@thehindu.co.in
