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Congress’ victory in Karnataka triggers speculation on TMC’s strategy for 2024
Mamata Banerjee has maintained that leaders of regional parties should share a common platform against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The landslide victory of the Congress in the recently concluded Karnataka assembly polls has triggered speculations on how Trinamool Congress (TMC) chairperson Mamata Banerjee will deal with the grand old party and the Left forces in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Since last year, the West Bengal chief minister has been saying that leaders of regional parties should share a common platform against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but maintained her distance from the Congress and the Left.
The Congress, too, targeted her saying TMC contested state polls in Goa, Meghalaya and Tripura only to help BJP by splitting opposition votes.
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The mutual bitterness peaked in March when the Congress-Left alliance won the Sagardighi assembly by-election in Bengal’s Murshidabad district where Muslims comprise 66.28% of the population, the state’s highest.
The Left-backed Congress candidate secured 47.35 % votes while TMC’s share dropped to 34.94%. The BJP came third with only 13.94%.
This was seen by TMC leaders as a sign of erosion in their minority vote bank as in 2021 the ruling party lost the assembly poll at South 24 Parganas district’s Bhangar constituency where Muslims comprise around 67% of the population.
In her first reaction to the Sagardighi results, Banerjee said that the BJP, the Congress and the Left formed an “unholy alliance” to defeat TMC.
The Congress maintains that it will lead the Opposition alliance of like-minded parties against the BJP in the 2024 Lok sabha elections, however, the TMC had in March said that the party will not go with the Congress. A TMC MP also had said that the Congress should not believe that it was the ‘big boss’ of the opposition.
On Saturday, when the Karnataka poll results were announced, Banerjee said the BJP will not get even 100 seats across the nation in 2024. For the first time, she said even national parties should have one-on-one contests against the BJP in states where they have a stronghold. She, however, did not name the Congress.
West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, on the other hand, made it clear that the TMC does not figure anywhere in the fight against the BJP.
“Didi (Banerjee) underestimated Rahul Gandhi and the effect of his Bharat Jodo Yatra. Congress is the only party that can lead the fight against BJP,” Chowdhury said.
Going a step forward, former state Congress president Pradip Bhattacharya said the Congress and Left parties should form a strong alliance in the coming Bengal panchayat polls and Lok Sabha elections, a proposition which was supported by Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] state secretary Md Salim.
Also Read: BJP won’t even get 100 seats in 2024 LS polls: WB CM on Karnataka election results
“It is time for Left and Congress to come together,” Bhattacharya said.
Salim said, “From the very beginning, TMC, Samajwadi Party and Aam Aadmi Party had been trying to forge a non-CPI(M), non-Congress alliance. Such an alliance will only give advantage to the BJP. CPI(M) is opposed to this. We are always willing to be part of a common anti-BJP platform.”
On Sunday, TMC state vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar did not comment on whether his party will be part of an anti-BJP alliance with Congress at the national level. Instead, he singled out the Bengal Congress.
“There is a difference between the national Congress and the state Congress. Chowdhury is working as an agent of the BJP. With only two MPs and one MLA, the state Congress cannot claim to be a force to reckon with. The CPI(M), on the other hand, has no MP or MLA from Bengal. These parties only helped BJP in Bengal in the last 4-5 years,” Majumdar said,
