These are many questions being asked after her first visit to Delhi in two years
By Abdulhafiz Lakhani New Delhi
Will Mamata Banerjee emerge as the Opposition’s consensus candidate for Prime Minister in 2024?
In her, have the anti-BJP parties found the leader for whom they have long been searching?
Does she have the credentials, the temperament and the stature to lead a diverse group of leaders with varied interests?
Will she be the king or the king-maker?
These are the questions being asked after her first visit to Delhi in two years.
During her high-profile five-day visit to Delhi, the West Bengal CM and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee met many significant Opposition leaders, including Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi and AAP supremo and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal.
Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said that her five-day visit to the national capital was “successful”. “The Opposition needs to get united. I met several leaders. The outcome is good,” she told news agency ANI.
Briefing media persons about her trip, she further said that her meeting with various Opposition leaders was for a “political purpose” and that democracy “must go on”. “We need to work together to save democracy. Our slogan is save democracy, save the country,” Banerjee said.
The chief minister added she will meet Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar next time. “We want development for all…Farmers are on [the] road. My support for farmers will always be there. My concern is [the] rising petrol-diesel price, unemployment, Covid-19…We will come here (Delhi) every two months,” Banerjee was quoted.
Banerjee’s high-profile visit to Delhi included meetings with multiple important Opposition leaders, including Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi and party leader Rahul Gandhi, DMK MP Kanimozhi and even Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari. She told the media of speaking to RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav over the phone on Tuesday.
Mamata Banerjee said, “If there is sincerity and tendency that we don’t want to divide the vote, we can come [to power]
For now, Mamata Banerjee is keeping all her options open, including speaking to the likes of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Reddy or Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
TMC sources said the party was already eyeing states where they could build their organisation outside West Bengal, and the goal would be to either win or emerge as the primary Opposition.
“We don’t want to field 100 candidates and come up with two MLAs,” said a top party source to India Today TV.
According to sources close to siyasat dot net Trinamool Congress appears to have a game plan to influence politics in areas where Bengalis reside in large numbers. One will have to watch how the Trinamool Congress plays the electoral game in next year’s Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Goa where the BJP is in power.
It cannot make much of a difference in any of these States other than giving Mamata a much bigger national profile and keeping her in the news. That would suit her game plan to emerge as a possible face of the Opposition in the 2024 elections.
If it sticks to this plan, it will be venturing out far from its moorings, where its local politics is tethered to linguistic and regional identities. The Trinamool Congress has a limited area to explore outside West Bengal, specifically the north-eastern States and possibly Jharkhand where there is a sizable Bengali population.
The Trinamool Congress has a history of stepping into electoral waters in these particular States. It got the national party status in 2014 while, in 2016, it was recognised as a State party in Tripura, Arunachal and Manipur apart from, of course, West Bengal.
Way back in 2001, the Trinamool Congress had won a seat in the Assam elections. In 2010, it engineered a Congress split in Tripura to directly fight the CPM. In 2012, it was the main Opposition in Manipur. It fielded candidates in Arunachal Pradesh. In these States, it was the BJP that triumphed, the Trinamool Congress becoming a victim of ayaram-gayaram politics.
The party has consistently backed Bengali culture in these States. For instance, after the killing of five Bengalis in Assam in 2018,Her nephew Abhishek, speaking in Kolkata, famously bound Bengal and the BJP to the Trinamool Congress’s external politics: “This is a fight to preserve the Bengali culture. This is a fight for the rights of Bengalis. This fight is against the BJP’s politics of oppression and forcible occupation.”
Between 2022 and 2024, in the run-up to the general elections, several north-eastern States will also hold elections where the Trinamool Congress would want to project the image of pitting itself against the BJP on equal terms. The name of the game is: You become my rival in my State, I will become yours in others. If that provokes the “insiders” of these States to criticise the foray of “outsiders”, the Trinamool Congress would not be unnerved more than it already is by native criticism to perceived opposition by Bengali chauvinism.
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