The Aryavarth Express
Agency (Bengal): A fragile peace prevails between Congress and Trinamool Congress even as Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra (BJNY) has restarted in West Bengal coinciding with TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee’s north Bengal tour, both likely to criss cross almost the same turf. After her fusillades against the Congress leadership for not informing her beforehand about the BJNY, the TMC chief is holding her fire following conciliatory moves from Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge.
But as BJNY progresses and Banerjee’s caravan rolls on, of the two political outfits especially Congress is treading softly. On the face of it, the Congress has its reasons of not reading the riot act to TMC, apprehending further cracks in the already wobbly INDIA alliance weakened by desertion of Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal-U to BJP-led NDA.
But the reason of the TMC chief being irate with the party she broke away from in 1998 on a January day lies elsewhere. It is a manifestation of personalised political rivalry between state Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and the TMC chief dating back to the previous millennium.
It is a history of bad blood from the time when both Chowdhury and Banerjee were agitating against the Left Front monolith. But their camps differed and so did their leaders. Banerjee initially took her instructions from Subrata Mukherjee and then Siddhartha Sankar Ray. On the other hand, Chowdhury maintained his loyalty to Somen Mitra, an arch rival of Banerjee in the state Congress at that period.
The duo had their share of intra-party skirmishes. The intra-party battle reached its climax when Banerjee staked her claim to the state Congress chief’s post even as her senior in the Congress, Mitra rivalled her claim. Mitra became the state Congress chief amidst wild allegations that the election was rigged to defeat Mamata.
Mitra became the state Congress chief at a time when agitations against the Left Front regime were stepping up under the combined leadership of Ray and Banerjee. But after Mitra assuming charge of the state unit, the anti-front agitations retarded with the spate of stirs slackened making Banerjee decide to float her own outfit Trinamool Congress dubbing the state Congress as a front organisation of the Left dispensation.
Much water has flown by the Hooghly when the placid Opposition politics in West Bengal took an unexpected bend with the rank and file of the Congress switching loyalty towards the Trinamool Congress floated by Banerjee. The rest is history as a TMC- Congress combine in 2011 replaced a 34 year old Left Front regime.
It was preceded by some unprecedented developments including Mitra walking into the Lok Sabha as a Trinamool MP from Diamond Harbour. Yet Chowdhury struck to his guns and it was the resignation of his lieutenant Manoj Chakraborty from the state Cabinet which precipitated the parting of ways between Congress and Trinamool from the Mamata led state government in 2012.
It was at Chowdhury’s initiative that Congress and Left entered into an electoral understanding in the 2016 Assembly elections. Even if desertions to TMC thinned the impressive ranks of the Opposition, it gave the ruling dispensation a run for its money in the Assembly sessions.
Even as TMC became a part of the INDIA alliance, hatchets were not buried between it and state Congress unit led by Chowdhury. Steeped in years of street politics, no punches were pulled in the war of words between the chief minister and the state Congress chief.
Efforts of the TMC to defeat Chowdhury by putting one of his closest associates in 2019 Lok Sabha polls against Chowdhury at Berhampore were fresh in his memory. Post elections, as leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party and state Congress chief, he trained his guns on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the TMC supremo in an almost equal measure.
The chief minister’s recent call to her party activists not to consider Chowdhury, a five time MP, to be invincible in Berhampore did not endear him to the Congress leader and he is not going to leave any stone unturned to defeat him in the coming elections. Neither the two leaders despite being part of the same anti-BJP front have minced their words towards each other till date.
The Congress is only too aware that in the event of TMC deciding. to maintain equal distance from INDIA and NDA, the Congress would be in a most unenviable position in the 2024 elections. The cold reception extended to Rahul Gandhi-led BJNY by TMC government in West Bengal as manifest in denial of state government accommodation facility at Malda and Murshidabad is inarguably a pointer to TMC considering BJNY to be an intrusion into its territory.
Even as TMC leadership started taking pot shots at Chowdhury dubbing him an agent of the BJP out to implode the INDIA unity, strong protests were voiced by the CPI(M) leadership. The Left Congress proximity is another factor that that rankles the Trinamool supremo till date. The Bengal CPI(M) is joining Rahul’s Yatra in the state as the TMC is not participating. The CPI(M) is waiting for the final signal from the Congress about opting for electoral alliance with the Left after snubbing from Mamata Banerjee.
As regards the Congress high command, the party leaders are still making efforts to persuade Mamata for an alliance with the Congress on the basis of an understanding on seat sharing in Assam and Meghalaya. There is a talk of Adhir being asked not to comment on Mamata anymore. But whether Adhir will agree or not is a big question. The Congress is in a bind, The Party is looking for a few sure seats from Bengal in the Lok Sabha polls but that will require total surrender by the party to the TMC supremo. Will the Congress high command go for it, that is the moot issue in Bengal politics now. (IPA Service)
By Tirthankar Mitra