New Delhi: Trinamool Congress leaders, owing allegiance to Mamata Banerjee, have reportedly confirmed a Congress outreach before next month’s bye-elections with a proposal to share one seat each, and the subsequent turndown — a development indicating trading positions, with the latter now acquiring high political grounds after this year’s Assembly poll results in West Bengal.
In the Assembly polls held in April this year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 208 seats and Trinamool 80 in the 294-member West Bengal Assembly.
Later, Rejinagar and Bhabanipur were left vacant after the winning candidates, which included Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, opted out and retained the other they had simultaneously won. Reeling from electoral setbacks in West Bengal, followed by several leaders and elected representatives walking out of its folds and many under investigation over alleged malpractices, Trinamool’s top leadership had contacted Congress General Secretary (Organisation) K.C. Venugopal with the seat-sharing proposal.
According to a Trinamool MP, the Congress never reverted, rather went on to announce candidates for both seats.
When asked later, Venugopal apparently pointed to strong objections from regional party members.
Congress leaders are also said to have cited Mamata’s earlier decision to end alliances with Congress and allegations of attacks and harassment against its workers under the previous Trinamool Congress government in the state.
Reports quoted West Bengal Congress President Shubhankar Sarkar having said the Trinamool Congress should rather support its candidates in both seats and that only then the possibility of a future alliance could be considered.
Incidentally, when Sarkar replaced Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury as the party leader ahead of state election, it was assumed that the Congress high command intended to send a show of softening in stand in Congress ranks towards Mamata Banerjee.
Since the parting of ways began, another bitter war of attrition between the two parties, which escalated with the appointment of Chowdhury as the state Congress Chief.
A known Mamata-baiter, Chowdhury upped the ante against the then ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, with the party frequently lodging protests in with Central Congress leaders, including Sonia Gandhi.
The Congress by then had successfully held hands with the Communists against a common political foe at the State Secretariat, forgetting the pitched verbal and physical battles of almost three-and-a-half decades.
It was this animosity that made Mamata Banerjee walk out of the Congress fold in 1997 and form the Trinamool Congress next year.
She held the view that senior Congress leaders in the state did not intend to seriously take on the Left Front government, rather accusing many of a covert understanding.
But in 2011, the Mamata-led Trinamool Congress, in alliance with Congress and the Socialist Unity Centre of India, ended the Left Front’s 34-year uninterrupted rule in West Bengal, winning 227 seats.
A year later, however, she withdrew support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), with a comfortable majority in the state Assembly with 187 members of her own.
The State Congress leadership had leaned heavily on the party high command in 2006 and 2011 for an alliance with the Trinamool Congress in their fight against the Communists.
Of late, with the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Left and Trinamool Congress joined the Congress-led INDIA bloc, yet Mamata Banerjee chose to go alone in West Bengal.
Now, the Congress having turned down Mamata’s offer for a seat sharing equation for the upcoming bye-elections in West Bengal marks a political lesson in not only that losers can’t be choosers but beyond, that it can’t even expect a direct answer.
Since the 2026 Assembly election, the wheel of fortune has turned and the party that once appeared desperate for an alliance with the same organisation that broke out of it and alleged it of a covert understanding with the Left Front is today ignoring their poll outreach.
In the last few months, Trinamool Congress and the Congress seems to have traded places, with the latter taking the upper hand, following the recent mandate despite its comparatively weaker strength still.
(IANS)
