The Trinamool Congress’s nomination of candidates to the Rajya Sabha has been an exercise in balancing local and national aspirations ever since the party came to power in West Bengal in 2011. On February 11, when the Trinamool nominated four candidates to the Upper House, including three women, it continued a trend which it has adhered to for the past 12 years.
Mamata Bala Thakur, one of the three women nominated, is an interesting choice considering the politics over the implementation of The Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), 2019, in the State, and the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The West Bengal BJP leadership, particularly Bongaon MP and Union Minister of State for Shipping Santanu Thakur, has been promising nearly every week to implement the CAA. He has been trying to assure the electorate of the constituency bordering Bangladesh that he will fulfil what he had promised in 2019.
Mamata Bala Thakur is a two-time Lok Sabha MP from Bongaon and is the BJP MP’s relative. Both she and Santanu Thakur hail from the family of the founders of the Matua sect, mostly comprising Dalits who shifted to West Bengal from East Bengal (present-day Bangladesh) without proper citizenship documents. The Matuas, who constitute one-fifth of West Bengal’s Scheduled Caste population, have suffered for decades as a result. Over the past few years, the Matuas and their citizenship have been at the centre of the BJP’s politics around the CAA. Mamata Bala Thakur has been nominated to challenge the BJP’s support base among the Matuas. With her nomination, the number of women Rajya Sabha MPs from the Trinamool will stand at five.
With the second candidate, Md. Nadimul Haque, who is the owner of a popular Urdu daily from Kolkata called Akbar-E- Mashriq, being renominated, the number of Trinamool Rajya Sabha MPs from the Muslim community will be two. One Rajya Sabha MP from the party is from the Scheduled Tribes category. This shows continuation of one of the core principles of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s politics: to represent every major community which has a significant electoral support base. Of the 16 Rajya Sabha MPs from West Bengal, 13 are from the Trinamool, two from the BJP, and one from the CPI(M).
The recent nominations of the Trinamool to the Rajya Sabha have also been made keeping in mind the party’s national ambitions. The Trinamool has been attempting to extend its footprint in Goa, Tripura, and Assam, but this has not borne much fruit yet. The party, however, has not given up on the idea of a pan-India presence and wants to have a strong voice in both Houses of Parliament.
The third candidate is Sushmita Dev who had resigned from the Congress in August 2021 and was briefly nominated by the Trinamool to the Rajya Sabha. The daughter of Assam Congress stalwart Santosh Mohan Dev, Ms. Dev was elected as an MP from the Silchar seat, a stronghold of her father. Her presence in the Trinamool is crucial to the party’s plans in the Northeast, particularly Assam and Tripura.
The nomination that came as the biggest surprise to the Trinamool’s rank and file was that of journalist Sagarika Ghose. The Delhi-based journalist had no connection to the party before this announcement. However, this is not the first time that Ms. Banerjee has chosen a political greenhorn with little or no connection to West Bengal to represent the State in the Rajya Sabha. Last year, the Trinamool nominated Right to Information activist Saket Gokhale to the Upper House. The Trinamool wants its MPs in the Rajya Sabha to be articulate and tackle the BJP head on, but at the same time have little say in the party’s affairs and internal decision-making.
Sources in the Trinamool say that such nominations are made to avoid factionalism in the party. Nominees to the Rajya Sabha with no interest in the State’s politics and in the internal functioning of the party are beneficial to the Trinamool. This is significant especially since the Trinamool is going through a period of churn. The old guard, supported by the Chief Minister, and the new leadership, led by her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, appear to be at loggerheads frequently. The Trinamool has often fielded actors from the Bengali film industry and cultural sphere to represent the party in the Lok Sabha and the State Assembly for a reason — they do not pose any threat to the existing power structure in the party.
