Why is Mamata Banerjee set on playing the lose-lose game? What does the two-term West Bengal chief minister hope to gain by breaking up the INDIA coalition even before it has really begun? There are now barely 90 days to go before the make-or-break 2024 Lok Sabha election. INDIA does not seem to have made any progress on thrashing out a strategy to take on the BJP. Yet, hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unprecedented show of strength in Ayodhya, Banerjee dropped a bombshell.
The Ekla Chalo bomb. No tie-up with the Congress in Bengal, she has declared. What Trinamool Congress does next will be decided after the election, she pronounced.
But why has Banerjee taken this extreme step?
BJP’s bidding
The CM has learned her politics the hard way. With no political godfather and no moneybags, she has pulled herself up to her current status by the bootstraps. Very few politicians in the country today can rival her mastery of electoral politics. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has rightly said that INDIA is unimaginable without her. But it is also unimaginable that Banerjee pulled the rug out from under the coalition’s feet in a fit of pique without clear-eyed calculations. Banerjee can’t tell whether the move will benefit TMC or not.
What’s her arithmetic?
For those looking beyond the immediate drama, there are no easy answers.
The easy option is to look at what her direct political opponents in West Bengal—the Left and Congress—have to say. Both parties argue that Banerjee’s politics isn’t driven by arithmetic but history—a history of corruption by TMC leaders that has forced her to capitulate to BJP’s ED-CBI raj. This corruption, they allege, is not a figment of the ED-CBI’s imagination but a reality that has seen TMC leaders go in and out of jail over the last 12 years. Today, at least two senior ministers—Jyotipriyo Mallik and Partha Chatterjee—are “in” and need a lot of luck to get “out” unscathed.
If Banerjee wants to keep her flock, including nephew and TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, out of jail, she has to do the BJP’s bidding. And the BJP has now bid her to break INDIA.
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TMC’s huge worry
The more complex answers to the arithmetic question may lie in more math. Minority math, for starters. Minority votes in West Bengal stand at about 30 per cent and it goes to TMC en bloc. That is general knowledge. However, in the 2021 assembly election, a new-born party, the Indian Secular Front (ISF), founded by a ‘pir’ or religious leader Abbas Siddique made a tiny inroad. While Congress and Left each got less than five per cent of the vote share and not a single seat, the ISF snatched a seat from the TMC in Bhangar. The constituency is located in the South 24 Parganas district where Muslims account for a significant 30 per cent of votes.
Flash in the pan? Not quite, it seems. In panchayat elections last year, ISF spread its wings, even if with small wins, in North 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, and East Midnapore. It has big plans for 2024. Its lone MLA Naushad Siddiqui has been quoted saying he will contest from the Diamond Harbour constituency this time, the seat held by Abhishek Banerjee since 2014. ISF has clearly thrown down the gauntlet.
Months before the panchayat polls, the Congress’ victory at Sagardighi in an assembly election, had made TMC sit up and take notice. Sagardighi is in Murshidabad district, once the fief of Congress state chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. He has repeatedly won Lok Sabha elections from Berhampore in that district but in 2021, TMC swept 20 out of 22 seats there—making him look shaky. Sagardighi is also minority dominated. TMC has since wooed the Congress MLA into its fold, but Sagardighi has caused unease in the TMC regarding cracks in the minority vote bank. ISF’s panchayat results added to that.
For TMC, it is a huge worry. Since 2011, and earlier, the minority vote has been its almost exclusive preserve. If this vote bank cracks, there could be serious trouble for the party. The Muslim vote nationwide is believed to be consolidating behind the Congress again. If that happens in West Bengal and ISF gets Muslim votes, the math could turn ominous for TMC.
Mamata Banerjee’s long game
The math has turned tricky for the BJP as well. Its 77-seat haul in 2021 is considerably whittled down, thanks to ghar wapsi by TMC MLAs who had switched sides during the assembly election. In Lok Sabha, the BJP’s 2019 tally of 18 seats is down to 17, with the party losing the Asansol seat. Even minus these losses, the BJP’s fortunes have not been on the upswing in the state. Leader of Opposition in the state Suvendu Adhikari and party state president Sukanta Majumdar are making noises but are unable to dispel the view that BJP is a fractious, faction-ridden and organisationally weak party, living under the hope that its Delhi bosses will come to the rescue.
But can TMC sit back and take it easy about BJP’s dwindling fortunes? No. Union Home Minister Amit Shah seems unrelenting in his West Bengal crusade. He has set a tall target for the BJP’s state unit: 35 seats in 2024 Lok Sabha. And Shah has been hopping in and out of the state. Even as Rahul Gandhi traverses north Bengal with his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra on Thursday, Shah will come to Kolkata on Sunday to run his own campaign.
Incumbency is a real thing, too, especially when charges of corruption are proving hard to dust off.
And finally, there is 2026. While 2024 Lok Sabha may seem to be the most important election of all time, it is not going to be the last. Assembly election is due in West Bengal in two years and there is no question that Banerjee is already drawing up a strategy to win it. She cannot afford to give INDIA partners Congress or Left even an inch in 2024 and risk any of them—including BJP and ISF—grab a yard in 2026. She has to ensure that the TMC perpetuates.
This way, perhaps, Banerjee’s lose-lose game in 2024 ensures that 2026 is a win-win. Banerjee knows if she breaks ranks, there will be nothing left of INDIA. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has followed in her footsteps in Punjab. The possibility of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his Janata Dal (United) doing a somersault is just not going away. For Banerjee, it is in her best interest to consolidate TMC’s position in West Bengal as much as possible, showing no quarter to any political rival in the state. Delhi can wait.
The last word on INDIA may not have been said yet. But the dictionary is running out of synonyms.
The author is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)