The Trinamool Congress (TMC) or the All India Trinamool Congress (AITMC) is a political party based in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. It was founded by Mamata Banerjee in 1998 after she split from the Indian National Congress.
The party came to power in the state with Mamata Banerjee as the CM in 2011, defeating the Left Front in the Assembly elections and marking the end of the longest democratically elected Communist government in the world.
The Trinamool Congress led by Mamata Banerjee used the 2006-07 protests against the Left Front government over Nandigram and Singur to rally supporters and popularity in Bengal. It joined hands with the Congress in the state for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and won 19 seats, thus joining the Manmohan Singh government at the Centre. Two years later, it ended the Left’s 34-year rule in Bengal. Earlier, though, the Trinamool had also aligned with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in 1999, when Mamata Banerjee was made Railways Minister.
Besides dominating Bengal, the Trinamool Congress has also contested elections in Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, and Goa. The party is one of the strong opposition voices in the Union parliament.
Why no left voice was chosen to comment on a Talk Point about left votes? The left never went away in WB! its supporters are going to vote for it unless TMC and BJP goons use violence to stop left candidates from filing nominations and left supporters from voting.
I wonder what was the basis for selection of the three, supposedly neutral, voices in this piece. All three seem to be rabid anti BJP in their ideology. Assistant Professor Maidul Islam should know that these days no party gets 50% of the vote. Hence to say that the majority in Bengal would not vote for BJP is stating the obvious. Since he is predicting a national role for TMC can he tell us if he is expecting TMC to get 51% of the popular vote in Bengal? He should know that TMC did not even participate in the assembly elections in Tripura, the next state after Bengal they should have logically gone to.