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By Shikha Mukerjee: On the day that Congress emphatically won in the Karnataka election, Mamata Banerjee’s response was studiedly lukewarm. She has since changed her mind, which is her prerogative.
Mamata Banerjee has made a conditional offer to the Congress, that she will support the party’s bid to oust the Bharatiya Janata Party, defeat Narendra Modi and negotiate a seat sharing arrangement in West Bengal. The Trinamool Congress will not contest in the seats where according to its estimates the Congress stands a fighting chance to defeat the BJP. In return, the Congress should agree to a seat sharing arrangement in West Bengal, the terms of which she will obviously dictate.
There must be a reason why the politically astute West Bengal leader has done a volte face. The most obvious explanation could be, she hopes that a binding arrangement with the Congress will influence the party’s remaining small band of loyal voters, about 2.93 per cent as per the 2021 state assembly election, to reconsider switching their allegiance to the BJP. Political observers have maintained, as has Mamata Banerjee, that ever since the 2018 panchayat election in West Bengal, more and more Congress voters have opted for the BJP, as the emerging alternative that can stand up to the Trinamool Congress’s overpowering dominance.
Also Read: ‘Trinamool willing to support Congress if…’: Mamata Banerjee after Karnataka result
Working with the enemy
Mamata Banerjee’s overtures to the Congress, with strings guaranteed to make the state party bristle, is probably a deliberate attempt to be seen as willing to work with the enemy. She may be hoping that her move will be politically interpreted by traditional voters of the Congress as a signal that the time has come to reconsider voting for the BJP, starting with the overdue panchayat election. If it works, she can expect to retain most of the 95 per cent of the top tier zilla parishad seats the Trinamool Congress won in 2018, 90 per cent of the middle tier panchayat samiti seats and 73 per cent of the bottom tier gram panchayat seats that the party captured in 2018.
Fired up by her ambition to make it big in national politics, preventing the BJP from increasing its rural base through the panchayat election is crucial for Mamata Banerjee’s plans. In 2018, the BJP won about 20 per cent of the gram panchayat seats from Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Jhargram, Purulia, West Medinipur and Birbhum districts. Those victories converted into some of the 18 seats the party won in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections that spurred Amit Shah’s dream of ousting Mamata Banerjee in 2021.
Also Read: Why Congress-baiter Mamata had a change of heart
Threat within BJP camp
As the fortunes of the Congress and the Communist Party of India Marxist led Left Front’s declined reflected in the haemorrhaging vote share since 2011, there has been a marked jump in the BJP’s popularity. The saffron party’s vote share spiralled from 10.16 per cent in the 2016 state assembly election to a stunning 40.2 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and then sank to 38.1 per cent in the 2021 state assembly election. The Congress vote share in 2016 was 12. 5 per cent, it dropped to 5.5 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha election and plunged to 2.93 per cent in 2021 state assembly election. The Congress Left election alliance in 2016 for the state assembly picked up 39.16 per cent of the votes. Over the years, the losses piled up by the Congress and the Left, separately seem to have added considerably to the BJP’s vote share and to a much smaller extent, to the Trinamool Congress’s share.
Should the Congress eventually abandon its current hostility to the Trinamool Congress, before or after the panchayat elections, whenever those are held, the BJP would have a problem. Its zooming vote share was based on popular perception of its potential as a challenger to Mamata Banerjee. It failed in 2021. Since then, the BJP has been working intermittently to make itself more popular, but that has yet to be tested. If it cannot better its 2018 panchayat election performance this year, it will have reasons to be worried about its prospects in West Bengal in 2024.
Since it is inconceivable that the CPI M would have anything to do with the Trinamool Congress regardless of what the larger political compulsion of fighting the BJP may be, Mamata Banerjee has little elbow room to make friends of past foes in order to squeeze the BJP into as small a box as possible in the overdue forthcoming panchayat elections in West Bengal. And she needs friends at the moment.
Also Read: How BJP’s Karnataka debacle calls for rethink of strategy
Didi on damage control
The pitch to the Congress to join forces could well be a part of her last ditch effort to repair the damaging impact on the Trinamool Congress’s credibility and popularity of scandalous revelations of ‘staggering corruption’ by senior, middle rung leaders and their side kicks in teacher recruitment, municipal recruitment, housing subsidies, illegal trade in cattle and coal mining, all of which are being investigated by central agencies including the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax under supervision of the Calcutta High Court.
The Trinamool Congress and Abhishek Banerjee, the party’s only national general secretary have been working overtime to counter the consequences of such monumental ‘corruption’, showcased by the media that filmed and photographed lurid visuals of mountains of cash, lavish residential apartments and documents of ownership that implied benami holdings of assets that were exceptionally disproportionate to the known sources of incomes of ministers, government appointees, their aides and their friends. So has Mamata Banerjee, though to a lesser extent, even as she has lashed out against the BJP’s targeting of political threats through “raid raj” carried out by “agencies.” Her challenge at times has been over the top: arrest and jail me and even then, I shall continue to fight. Her nephew’s challenge has been similarly theatrical: if I am proved corrupt, I will hang myself publicly.
Insecure and apprehensive about voter reaction to visual evidence of rampant corruption, confirmed by scathing indictments from the judge, Abhijit Gangopadhyay, steering the investigations, Mamata Banerjee as the chief minister has launched a new mass contact initiative and in parallel, her party has launched a separate initiative. The government programme is all about doorstep delivery of social and welfare benefits, Duare Sarkar, which has been successful because it is popular. “We don’t have to run around from one government office to another, spending days away from work anymore. Duare Sarkar is a one stop shop and very convenient,” says Kobita who works in an office.
Also Read: Despite Mamata Banerjee’s support, Congress vows to fight Trinamool in Bengal
The Panchayat litmus test
The Trinamool Congress mass contact programme – Naba Jowar or New Tide – is a not seen as a relief, but with scepticism. “The party has to say something about the corruption” is the almost universal response to Abhishek Banerjee’s 3,500 kilometre trek through rural Bengal.
To enable the trek –Jana Sangjog (Mass Contact) and the novel exercise in soliciting local opinion through a secret ballot by the Trinamool Congress to select candidates for the forthcoming panchayat election — Gram Banglar Motamot (Rural Bengal’s Opinion poll) that is expected to end in late June, the date for the panchayat election has not been announced as yet.
The last election in 2018 was held on May 14. After five years, every panchayat member is now in danger of losing legitimacy to represent her constituency, unless the date for the 2023 elections is announced almost immediately.
There is no indication when the Mamata Banerjee government will ask the West Bengal State Election Commission to set a date for the three tier panchayat elections, an omission that calls into question the reason for failing to do so. The Representation of Peoples Act and the Constitution provide for calling elections any time six months prior to the date when the elected body was constituted. The provision for holding elections after the term has expired is very limited. The law is perfectly clear that holding elections after the term of the elected body has ended is an exception, such as if a state of emergency is declared or there is an event that makes it impossible to hold the election.
By all accounts, the delay in calling the elections is a consequence of the tortuous process that the Trinamool Congress has adopted to select who shall represent it in the 2023 panchayat elections. However democratic the process may be in principle the manner in which the selection is being conducted leaves room for doubts about its sanctity.
The damage limitation exercise has not worked, till now. The overture to the Congress is possibly Mamata Banerjee’s effort to find new voters to bolster the vast support base she enjoys as a manoeuvre to box in the BJP.
Also Read: Beginning of BJP’s end: Mamata Banerjee on Karnataka mandate
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