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.
1. Lok Sabha election is due in May 2019. Smt Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal (WB) and head of Trinamool Congress (TMC), who has been a bitter critic of NDA and PM Shri Modi, has a single point agenda for next year’s Lok Sabha election: to defeat BJP. 2. As part of her efforts to defeat what often she calls ‘fundamentalist’ BJP, she is keen that regional parties like SP, BSP, AAP, RJD, NCP, TDP, TRS (and possibly BJD) come together and form a Third or Federal Front. I suppose the rally proposed to be held in January 2019 in Kolkata would be a major initiative to bring together all regional parties. 3. Interesting questions with regard to the Third/Federal fronts are these (a) Would parties like JD(S), AIADMK, and Communists be invited for participation in the January rally? (b) Would Smt Mamata Banerjee be ready to include Congress in the Third/Federal front? 4. Smt Mamata Banerjee recently declared her resolve to ensure that TMC wins all 42 Lok Sabha seats in WB. What would happen to Congress party in WB then? Political developments in next six months will be worth watching.