Kolkata: “This day, 25 years ago, TMC came into existence. I recall our struggles through the years & the role we have played in empowering people, fighting injustice and inspiring hope. I heartily congratulate everyone for believing in the power of Maa, maati, manush. (Mother, soil, people),” tweeted Mamata Banerjee as her party completed 25 years earlier this week.
This day, 25 years ago, TMC came into existence.
I recall our struggles through the years & the role we have played in empowering people, fighting injustice and inspiring hope.
I heartily congratulate everyone for believing in the power of MAA, MAATI, MANUSH.
— Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) January 1, 2023
The journey has had its highs and lows but the founder and chairperson, Banerjee herself, has remained unfazed. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) was founded on 1 January, 1998, at a time when Banerjee realised she had to break away from the Congress to take her fight against the CPI(M) regime in Bengal forward.
She picked the time between the end of the 11th Lok Sabha and ahead of the 12th Lok Sabha to feel the political pulse of the electorate, as she had gained admiration from the people who had seen her work. In the 1998 Lok Sabha elections months later, the party went on to win seven seats.
On the TMC launch day, Banerjee had said, “A silent revolution is taking place in West Bengal. The people are on the verge of writing history. A new political epoch will start.” On the same day, she sketched the party logo — two saplings on the grass, signifying ‘grass root’ or Trinamool.
Speaking to ThePrint, former bureaucrat and now Trinamool MP Jawhar Sircar recalled the time when Mamata Banerjee submitted the TMC logo to the Election Commission.
Sircar had taken charge as the chief electoral officer in West Bengal a few months before and the stage was already set for mid-term polls as the PM (the UPA’s I.K Gujral) had resigned.
“M.S. Gill was the election commissioner of India at the time. He had sent me queries about the split in the Congress before approving the logo,” said Sircar.
He added: “He wanted to know if Mamata’s action constituted a real and significant split within the Congress as she had only a handful of supporters then. The official Congress was playing it down. We had, therefore, to go deeper and make a realistic estimate of her new party’s strength. The atmosphere was totally charged and Mamata Banerjee secured the logo as a new party, though she used the Congress colours and the name (partially). It was remarkable how she directly plunged into the political fight with all the odds against her.”
As a bureaucrat assigned to conducting elections, Sircar would have to keep a close watch on political parties as part of his job. “I remember asking Mamata Banerjee at the State Election Office how she would take on so many elements — her ex-party, the Congress, her arch rival, the CPI(M) — with no locus standi, no help, no funding, no structure. And she only replied, ‘we have conviction, so just watch what happens’. The rest is history. 25 years later, here I am in a totally different role, on her side now,” said Sircar.
Interestingly, BJP leader and former member of Parliament, Dinesh Trivedi was one of the founding members of the TMC and the first leader from the party to enter the Rajya Sabha.
“When TMC was founded, the intention was to establish rule of law and democracy in a state that was fed up with corruption and violence. We in TMC would say ‘badla noy, bodol chayi’ (we don’t want revenge, we want change),” Trivedi recalled.
He added: “Bengal has the best talent in the world. Bengalis are highly cultured and peace-loving. They don’t want to get into any jhamela (trouble). We began with this ideology, ultimately, the nation is seeing the outcome. The TMC derailed and I drifted from the party. We lost the greatest opportunity given to us by the people of Bengal.”
Trivedi, who said he still regards the West Bengal Chief Minister highly, told ThePrint that during his close association with Banerjee while in the TMC he always wanted her to work closely with the Centre for the development of the state.
“There are two phases, the struggle before power, and the other phase is post power. It is difficult to digest power. The moment you get into power, you are surrounded by sycophants and mafias and people who want good, are pushed out,” he said.
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The split from Congress
Since mid-1970, West Bengal Congress was led by Gandhi family loyalists such as Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, Subrata Mukherjee, and Soumen Mitra who owe their political rise to either Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, or Rajiv Gandhi. In September 1985, Munshi was appointed the Pradesh Congress Committee chief. During this time, Banerjee had already completed one year as MP from Jadavpur constituency, after defeating Somnath Chatterjee. Another key figure who had a hold on the West Bengal Congress during this period was Pranab Mukherjee.
On 9 August, 1997, Banerjee announced the formation of Trinamool Congress from outside Kolkata’s Netaji indoor stadium, while the AICC plenary session was underway inside the venue. Banerjee had not been invited as her fallout with Congress leaders had become evident. Her mass rally, clashing with Congress’ key event, drew more crowds. She stated she would also form units of frontal organisations like the Congress and indicated that the Trinamool would be more regional than pan-India oriented.
She named Pankaj Banerjee the president of the Trinamool Congress committee, and Tamanash Ghosh and Jyotipriya Mallick as the working presidents of Trinamool Youth Congress.
Jayanta Ghoshal, author of the book, Mamata: Beyond 2021, said, “much water has flown under the Howrah Bridge since Banerjee resigned from the Congress to form her own party. And the party that was once a giant tree standing over the country has steadily withered to become a stump in national politics. To revive the party in Bengal, they should have aligned with Banerjee but they decided to target her and accused her of having an understanding with the BJP that sharply turned public opinion against the Congress.”
According to Ghoshal, it’s Banerjee who can prove to be the glue in opposition unity in 2024 against the Modi brigade.
But despite the split with Congress, the TMC chief has a photo of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at home, both at her Kolkata and New Delhi residences, said Ghoshal.
“Rajiv’s first reward to Banerjee was her appointment as the West Bengal Youth Congress President. But she was unaware of this elevation, and she found out through news agency PTI which had quoted Rajiv. During this time, she travelled with then Congress Youth president Anand Sharma abroad, to attend several international youth forums under the United Nations and other such global bodies,” Ghoshal recalled.
Rajiv Gandhi had had a glimpse of Banerjee’s fighting spirit in Parliament, where both were MPs in 1984. He would take Banerjee on the political campaign jeep along with him, said Ghoshal.
The West Bengal Chief Minister is also said to still have cordial relations with former Congress president Sonia Gandhi. When Sonia was reportedly travelling to America for health reasons in 2021, she “telephoned Banerjee and requested a meeting”. Banerjee is said to have cancelled all her official work and flown to Delhi. She met Sonia at her residence.
“Interestingly, when she was planning to quit the Congress back in 1997, Sonia Gandhi telephoned her to reconsider her decision,” said Ghoshal.
He added: “It’s only when Sitaram Kesri, and Pranab Mukherjee supported then WB Congress chief Soumen Mitra during his clash with Banerjee that she made up her mind to walk out of the Congress. She was fiercely anti-Left. Pranab Mukherjee was close to Jyoti Basu, then the CPI(M) Chief Minister of West Bengal, and so were other state Congress leaders. Banerjee wanted to continue her fight and she did,” said Ghoshal.
Turning point for TMC
Interestingly, the West Bengal CM hadn’t always been in opposition to the BJP. After her split with the Congress in 1997 and the formation of the TMC, Banerjee allied with the BJP and was even part of former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s cabinet as railway minister.
In 2001 after quitting the Vajpayee cabinet over the Tehelka expose, Banerjee allied with the Congress for the West Bengal elections. The TMC contested 226 seats, but won only 60. Its performance continued to crumble further in the 2003 panchayat polls, where it won only 16 of the 713 zilla parishads.
Political pundits had written off Banerjee when the party won only her seat in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls. Later next year, it lost control of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation as well.
Earlier, in November 2006, Banerjee was stopped on her way to Singur for a rally against Tata Motors’ Nano car project. This became a turning point for her, seeking 400 acres acquired by the then CPIM government to be returned to the farmers.
The Nandigram movement of 2007, spearheaded by Banerjee, against land acquisition for a chemical hub, gave a fresh lease of life to her party.
TMC MLA Madan Mitra, who was by Banerjee’s side when she was blocked in Singur said, “protest was a way of life and Mamata Banerjee would never shy away from leading from the front. She would infuse the cadres with spirit and grit.”
The TMC chief sat on a makeshift stage in Kolkata’s Esplanade and went on a hunger strike for 25 days in protest against the land acquisition. She called off her strike on 28 December after receiving a call from then Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh.
In 2011, TMC forged a historic win to defeat the 34-year-old CPI(M) regime in West Bengal and on 20 May, Banerjee took oath as the first woman chief minister of West Bengal. The TMC has been in power in the state since, winning the 2016 and 2021 elections.
Work done
According to a report card released ahead of the 2021 assembly elections by Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC), which is helping the TMC’s political campaign in the state, under the party, in the past 10 years, Bengal’s GDP has grown from Rs 4.1 lakh crore to Rs 6.9 lakh crore.
Under Kanyashree, a popular scheme, more than 67.29 lakh girls have been provided financial support for their education at the cost of Rs 6,720 crore, the report added. Government’s sabooj sathi scheme has provided 84 lakh bicycles to students. Also, 1.4 crore families have been provided Swasthya Shathi scheme, a health insurance of up to Rs 5 lakh per year.
According to political analyst Biswanath Chakroborty, despite West Bengal’s mounting debt burden, these schemes have made the TMC indispensable. “There is no political party that can match up to these sops that Mamata Banerjee has designed. Keeping aside the financial burden, the people obviously vote for TMC because of such schemes, provided the corruption is kept under check,” he said.
But even after 25 years, what makes Banerjee click with the people? TMC MP Sukhendu Sekhar Ray claimed it was “because of her tireless association at the grassroots. She is the voice of helpless, downtrodden people not just in Bengal but across the nation. From day one, she has been practising the politics of the common man, she fights to implement the will of the people. Her Singur movement made the apex court of the country declare the archaic land acquisition law null and void.”
TMC: Then, now & what next?
According to political observer Jayanta Ghoshal, there haven’t been any big changes in the Trinamool Congress since its inception, “Mamata has the last say in every aspect of the party. She decides the strategy and distributes responsibilities.”
Since 2019, however, her nephew and party MP Abhishek Banerjee has been seen at the forefront of TMC’s political course. It was Abhishek who had roped in political strategist Prashant Kishor, after the Lok Sabha elections that year, for the 2021 state assembly elections.
“Now, there is a clear transition that Abhishek looks after the party affairs and Banerjee looks at the governance of the state. They both sit together and chalk out political strategies. Abhishek is being groomed by the Trinamool chief herself, keeping the party’s future in mind. Banerjee will play a big role in 2024,” added Ghoshal.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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