Narada Ghost Might Dash Mamata’s National Political Ambition

The cases against Mamata Banerjee’s party colleagues have the potential to scald the leader herself.

Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal and chief of Trinamool Congress. (Photo: Reuters)

The upholding by the Supreme Court of the Calcutta High Court’s recent judgement ordering a CBI preliminary inquiry into the Narada tapes that purportedly feature some senior Trinamool Congress leaders allegedly taking bribes will certainly be a blow to the Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal.

The Supreme Court’s judgement now gives the CBI a free hand to proceed with the preliminary inquiry (PE) that was lodged immediately after the Calcutta High Court order last week. A PE is the first step for the central probe agency to assess whether the evidence – in this case the explicit video clips that show as many as seven to eight TMC leaders, including the party’s chief whip in Parliament, Saugata Roy – accepting wads of currency notes from an undercover reporter representing Narada News in exchange for promises of favours.

Narada Tapes Did Not Deter Voters in 2016

The Narada tapes were made public a few months before the 2016 Bengal assembly elections. However, instead of negatively impacting West Bengal’s electorate and in the face of a Congress-CPI(M) alliance, the TMC returned to power with a brute majority that improved substantially over the party’s first victory at the hustings in 2011.

Not only did the voters repose faith in the TMC, which won 211 of the 293 seats it contested and won 44.91 percent (38.93 percent in 2011) of the popular vote, they seemingly showed disinterest in the Narada and Sharada chit fund scams that the Congress and the much-depleted Left parties, besides the BJP, sought to project as electoral issues.

While the impact of the judicial blow for Mamata is yet to be assessed, it comes at a time when the mercurial West Bengal chief minister has stridently opposed the Narendra Modi government, especially the latter’s demonetisation decision.

Close on the heels of her high-decibel opposition to demonestiation and the campaign for elections to five state assemblies, two of Mamata’s close party colleagues – Lok Sabha MPs Sudeep Bandopadhyay and Tapas Paul – were arrested by the CBI for their alleged involvement in the Rose Valley chit fund payoffs case. Mamata, as has been her wont, screamed “conspiracy” and “political vendetta” when Bandopadhyay and Paul were taken into custody by the CBI.

While there were not too many buyers of her anti-Modi stance, the temperamental TMC chief’s vociferous opposition to the BJP may have served her well in consolidating her huge Muslim mass base across Bengal.

Also Read: The Man Behind the Narada Sting Is a Bhadrolok Hero

BJP Hawk-Eyed for a Foothold in West Bengal

Despite the political reverses – the arrest of Bandopadhyay and Paul – she has been perceived to have stood her ground in battling not the just the BJP but also a declining CPI(M). Her confrontationist politics is in direct contrast to the “peace” sought by other crafty politicians, especially Himanta Biswa Sarma, the former Assam Congress leader who switched loyalty to the BJP when the heat was turned on him for being an alleged beneficiary of the Sharada chit fund scam in the northeastern state.

But Mamata’s “politics involving the state’s minorities”, who form 27 percent of the state’s population, suits the BJP, which has been making efforts to find its electoral feet in Bengal. In the last assembly election, the BJP won three assembly constituencies with a 10.16 percent vote share, which was a measly 4.06 percent in the 2011 polls.

For the BJP, this signifies steady building-up forces in a state where it is banking on the Modi government’s decision to grant citizenship to Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh. Should the CBI now decide to register a regular case under relevant anti-corruption laws in the Narada sting operation case – the Calcutta High Court was convinced that the tapes are genuine – some of Mamata’s closest party colleagues may even face the heat.

Besides Saugata Roy, the others who feature in the video clips are Firhad “Bobby” Hakim, Mukul Roy, Subrata Mukherjee, Kakali Ghosh Dastidar, Shovon Chatterjee, Sultan Ahmed, Prasun Banerjee, Subhendu Adhikari, Aparupa Poddar, Madan Mitra (who was in jail for several months in connection with allegations of payoffs in the Sharada chit fund case) and Sankhudeb Panda.

Also Read: From Saradha to Narada: The Ugly Underbelly of Bengal Politics

Mamata Standing Alone Without Political Friends

The TMC initially had tried to brazen it out by claiming that the tapes were doctored and had given tickets to some of these leaders who subsequently contested the 2016 assembly elections, and won. But after Sudip Bandopadhyay and Tapas Paul’s arrest in January last year, Mamata’s defences seemed to have cracked, leaving her politically weak on the national plane.

More importantly, the looming CBI regular case will likely put pay to her ambition to lead a broad coalition of political parties against what appears to be a virtually unstoppable BJP juggernaut. The cases against Mamata’s party colleagues have the potential to scald the leader herself.

While that would be a “trump card” of sorts for the BJP, the immediate fallout of Mamata receding into the background could potentially pitchfork Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as a frontrunner for leadership to any united opposition in the two years before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

At the moment, however, Mamata is without friends among other political parties. And yet, it would be too early to write off the TMC leader who has seen and faced adversarial situations in the past and has turned them to her political advantage.