I.N.D.I.A Alliance Not Working In Bengal
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2024-01-21 06:08:19
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
The tiff between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress (TMC), both members of the opposition I.N.D.I.A alliance, is heating up in Bengal. For the last few days, TMC supremo and Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has shown her impatience with the Congress as she said that her party was the only one capable of beating the BJP in Bengal. Earlier, the TMC was willing to concede two Lok Sabha seats (Behrampore in Murshidabad and Malda Dakshin in Malda) which the Congress had won in 2019 to the party. But Congress had demanded more seats. The TMC, citing the results of the 2021 assembly elections in which the Congress performed very badly, is not willing to concede any more seats. The TMC has also made it clear that it is not going to hold any discussions over seat sharing with the CPM-led Left Front in the state.
The state unit of the Congress party is divided over who to ally with. While Behrampore MP and the leader of the Congress in the Rajya Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Choundary, who is a staunch critic of Mamata Banerjee, says the party will be better off in coming to a seat-sharing understanding with the Left Front, Malda Dakshin MP Abu Hasem Khan Choudhary favours an alliance with the TMC. The party high command had not made its views public yet, altough the TMChas said it will not wait and watch and will decide on its own if the Congress dithers. Importantly, when TMC said that it will contest on all 42 seats in the state, Adhir Ranjan Choudhary said he 'doesn't care'. It seems that despite being in alliance at the national level, the Congress, the TMC and the Left will not come to an understanding in Bengal in a bid to fiercely guard their individual bastions.
The TMC is holding the results of the 2021 assembly elections as proof of its rising stock and consequently the dwindling stock of all other parties, including the BJP. The TMC was shocked when the BJP won a record 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2019. But it claims it has clawed back and its performance in most of the assembly segments of the 18 seats which the BJP won in 2019 shows that it will wrest back a majority of them. Although people vote differently in assembly and Lok Sabha elections, the TMC claim of dwindling support for the BJP in the state has some validity as there is little buzz around the party this time.
But TMCs reluctance to concede more seats to the Congress and ignore the Left would mean that in most seats in Bengal, despite the I.N.D.I.A alliance, there will be three-cornered contests if the Congress-Left come to an understanding. Otherwise, there might well be four-cornered contests. In such a scenario, although the TMC considers that it is dominant, electoral arithmetic might help the BJP in winning some seats it might not have won if there were one-to-one contests. Or is it that the shrewd Mamata Banerjee knows that in one- to one contests with the BJP, the opposition votes, especially those of Left voters, might not transfer to the TMC and might go to the BJP creating problems for her party and that is why she is seeking to divide opposition votes by having multi-cornered contests?
