Mamata Going Solo in 2024: Understanding TMC's Electoral Calculations

The perception of Opposition unity among the INDIA bloc partners remains more blurred than ever before.

Rahul Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

Even as Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra entered the territory of West Bengal (WB), the perception of Opposition unity among the INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) bloc partners remains more blurred than ever before.

Given the significant shifts in her public posturing, Mamata Banerjee, undoubtedly the fiercest and most seasoned among the coalition politicians, has turned the heat on the Congress for having failed to generate any Opposition momentum and take the alliance's agenda forward and has decided to go solo in 2024.

The WB chief minister, who is a key constituent of the INDIA bloc, took serious exception to the fact that none from the Congress high command got in touch with her while Rahul's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra entered the state on a five-day march through some of the old Congress bastions. Courtesy demanded that the chief minister was informed and kept in the loop, she rued, while talking to media persons, signifying the evident disconnect within the alliance.

As for the Congress, the Yatra has been curated as a party event and it sent out a general invite to all alliance partners to join the rally if they wanted. The high command did not want the Congress DNA of the Yatra to be diluted by projecting it as a coalition initiative.

These Are Crucial Strategic Positionings of the TMC

With the INDIA alliance seat-sharing formula hanging in limbo, it is unlikely that the TMC's supporters would voluntarily join Rahul Gandhi’s Nyay Yatra. There is no instruction from the TMC urging party workers to participate in a Congress-sponsored Yatra. How can this happen without any formal electoral understanding being in place, asked some.

For either side, a lot of this is strategic posturing, aimed at enhancing the party’s individual entity than promoting a collective canvas.

Rahul Gandhi’s Nyay Yatra would traverse through Coochbehar, Jalpaiguri, Raiganj, Malda, and Murshidabad districts, and these are areas that still have some remnants of a glorious Congress past where leaders like Ghani Khan Chowdhury, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, Deepa Das Munshi, and Adhir Chowdhury have ruled and held sway.

These are also familiar terrains for the Gandhis as Sonia and Rahul, and even Indira, used to launch their electoral campaigns in Bengal mostly from these belts. But these milestones would also be bitter reminders of the fact that Congress has suffered massive erosions in its support base, with the beneficiaries being the Trinamool Congress and to some extent the BJP.

However, amid such chemistry, Mamata Banerjee has stopped just short of announcing a formal break out from the INDIA alliance and announced that the TMC will walk it alone as there is no seat-sharing formula in place till now. Chairing her internal party meetings in recent weeks, Mamata told TMC workers about the roles they should play in order to be combat-ready for all the 42 Lok Sabha seats in WB.

More significantly, she indicated that the TMC's participation in the INDIA alliance at the national level now may well become a post-poll affair. These are crucial strategic positionings of the TMC, but the final word is yet to be out.

Mamata Has Successfully Reduced Both Congress and CPI(M) to Near Extinction

One may recall Mamata Banerjee having stitched together a large coalition of political outfits during her Singur-Nandigram agitation days, prior to her coming to power in 2011. But she deserted coalition politics as well as the coalition partners one by one by the middle of her first term in office. Her one-party rule was further cemented when the Congress, which had been a key electoral partner in her win against the Left Front in 2011, broke away from her ministry around 2014, complaining about lack of respect. The same complaint seems to be bogging down the two sides even now with the WB Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury not wanting any 'charity' from the TMC.

Politically, Mamata Banerjee has successfully reduced both the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to near extinction. But battered by the ED and CBI raids for the past two years and perhaps sensing the shifting sands under her feet, she turned out to be a strong proponent of the formation of a national coalition of Opposition parties to fight the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

But with the announcement of Lok Sabha poll dates imminent, and with BJP already actively launching its electoral process in the state (Amit Shah is scheduled to make a two-day visit to the state on 28-29 January), Mamata Banerjee’s patience is wearing thin. Her threats betray a sense of urgency as well as a deep frustration and must not be taken as hollow. It is latent with real dangers and might turn into an unpleasant reality should the Congress high command continue to dither in chartering a more definite course for the INDIA alliance initiative.

Right from the beginning, Mamata Banerjee had urged the INDIA Bloc, particularly the Congress party, that ruling regional outfits should be given the freedom to decide the seat-sharing arrangements for their respective states. In her simple and workable formula, she had proposed that the Congress should fight 300 seats on its own, and the regional parties, dominant in their respective states should be given the freedom to decide the seat-sharing formulae based on past electoral performances.

But as things stand now, not a day passes by without the key constituents of the INDIA bloc hurling abuses and invectives at each other, queering the pitch for a cohesive and coordinated fight against the BJP. The INDIA Bloc initiative appears to have been reduced to a cacophony of warring voices. Instead of a consolidation of the coalition forces, the utterances of the recent weeks by INDIA partners have fanned flames of distrust and utter confusion.

Congress' Hesitancy May Result in 'INDIA' Being Further Derailed

Didi has reasons to be angry as the Congress party high command’s response to her demands at best had been reticent, lacking direction and the required aggression.

In WB, Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury had unleashed unmitigated attacks on the Trinamool Congress, having described the “Mamata government as corrupt” and demanded Presidential intervention on grounds of a total collapse of the law-and-order machinery. An integral part of the Congress high command’s core leadership, Chowdhury has been a big stumbling block in front of the smooth passage of the coalition in the state.

In Congress’ internal scheme of things, Adhir Chowdhury and a majority of other leaders had been successful in portraying to the high command that Mamata Banerjee had been the root cause of Congress's decay in Bengal. Whatever remains of the Congress in the state today would be further eliminated if it is made to follow the diktats of the TMC. It also wanted to be away from the stigma attached to the latter with over a dozen leaders including key party functionaries and ministers serving terms in judicial and police custody on corruption charges.

Besides, at the state as well as the national level, a better coalition chemistry has evolved between the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) over the past several years. An analysis of several past elections in states like Bengal shows that the Congress had benefited from an alliance with the CPI(M), and not vice versa. While Adhir Chowdhury finds the CPI(M) as a more “comfortable and compatible” partner in Bengal, so does the Congress high command in Delhi while dealing with leaders like Sitaram Yechuri.

However, when the Congress high command invited WB leaders for consultations and to listen to their views about an Opposition alliance, a section of the former's leadership had observed that a Congress-CPI(M) combine may not be a viable choice for voters who would be opposed to the TMC. The BJP may benefit more from those anti-TMC votes than both the Congress and the CPI(M). Incidentally, the BJP has already been the main Opposition in the state, removing the Congress and the CPI(M) from that space.

If defeating the BJP is the prime objective, a combined platform of the Congress and the TMC will be the best-case scenario. The Congress high command’s dilemma may have been caught between these two options. It largely explains the kind of response it had given to Mamata Banerjee’s persistent demand for a clearly spelled out seat-sharing policy. But the Congress' hesitancy may result in the alliance being further derailed.

(The writer is a Kolkata-based senior journalist. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)