January 22, 2025

AAP-TMC Tiff Not Good For Opposition Unity

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2022-02-13 14:23:32

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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

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There was a time when Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal were on the same page and displayed great bonhomie. Kejriwal attended the mega opposition rally Banerjee held in Kolkata to bring the opposition together. When Banerjee visited Delhi in July 2021 as part of her outreach to opposition leaders, she met Kejriwal after meeting Sonia Gandhi. But that phase seems to have passed and rising national ambitions have meant that the two parties, if not their supreme leaders, are at loggerheads in some states, especially in Goa where both parties are trying to finish off the Congress and turn the anti-incumbency against the BJP to their advantage. This situation is bound to get worse as both the TMC and the AAP will scale up their national ambitions, one state at a time.

In Goa, both parties filed claims against each other after a television channel telecast a video that alleged that some candidates have been paid to switch sides if they won the elections. Those accused included one TMC and three Congress candidates. Valmiki Naik, the AAP candidate from Panaji said his party filed a complaint with the chief electoral officer of the state regarding the video while Churchill Alemao, TMC candidate for Belaulim who is one of the persons accused of taking the bribe as per the video, lodged a complaint with the chief electoral officer demanding that the clip be removed from all platforms, and also filed an FIR against AAP and the TV channel.

Both Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal cannot stand the Congress. While Mamata was initially not averse to tying up with the party but now she thinks that Congress has not done and will not be able to do enough to stop the BJP. She has veered around to the view that a confederation of regional parties can displace the BJP and run the government at the Centre. But if strong regional parties fight among themselves, even that possibility will be negated. AAP is expected to perform well in Punjab (with some opinion polls even saying that it will form the government there) and Uttarakhand. It has also started to make inroads in Gujarat. Hence, any alliance of regional opposition parties will have the TMC and AAP as important pillars. That will not be possible if they fight with each other.