Alliances Do Not Always Give A Chance To The Most Suitable Candidate
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-09-19 09:14:15
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
Just a couple of days ago, the Trinamool Congress daily Jago Bangla published a lead article on its front page that argued that party supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was the only alternative to prime Minister Narendra Modi. Again, yesterday, Banerjee's nephew and party leader Abhishek Banerjee, while campaigning at the famous Lakshmi Narayan mandir of the Gujarati community in Bhowanipore in Kolkata (the constituency from where CM Mamata Banerjee will contest the bypoll to enter the assembly), repeated that she alone can bring change in 2024.
Hence, despite Mamata Banerjee's refrain in Delhi a couple of months back when she pitched hard for opposition unity that the question of leadership will be addressed when the time comes, it is clear that the Trinamool Congress will settle for nothing less than Mamata Banerjee as the face of the opposition to take on Narendra Modi and the BJP in 2024.
There is no doubt that Banerjee has the best credentials among all opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi. She has been ruling West Bengal for more than 10 years now with a fair degree of competence despite what her detractors say. Her social schemes have won praise and awards from national and international bodies. Kolkata was recently found to be the safest city in the country. To top all that, she defeated the BJP in one of the fiercest election contests this year even after the ruling party at the centre deployed everything that was there in its arsenal. That makes Banerjee the most suitable candidate to take on Modi and the BJP in 2024.
But the size of the party and national reach and acceptance matters more than the image and popularity of a leader when it comes to putting together an alliance of parties. Hence, while Mamata Banerjee towers above all opposition leaders, her party is too small and not nationally accepted (at least not proved so) for her candidature as the face of the opposition to be accepted by all, especially the Congress. With all-India infrastructure and governments in several states, the Congress will lay claim to that post and pitch strongly for Rahul Gandhi. Whether that is right or wrong is for the people to decide but the fact is that the Congress is likely to join any opposition alliance only if Rahul Gandhi is declared the prime ministerial candidate. It is also true that despite its falling popularity, any opposition alliance minus the Congress will only make contests three-cornered and that will benefit the BJP. This is one dilemma that the opposition has to solve, sooner rather than later, if it wants to make a serious bid in 2024.
