Congress’s Kirti Azad among three new TMC entrants

“I’ll work under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee and I’ll work at the ground level. India today needs a political personality like her at the Centre,” Kirti Azad, who left Congress to join TMC, said.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee barely stepped out of her home in New Delhi on Tuesday. Yet, she created ripples with three leaders from other parties joining the Trinamool Congress (TMC) that is on an expansion mode to gain national prominence.

Congress leader Kriti Azad greets West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee after joining TMC in New Delhi on Tuesday. (ANI)

Former diplomat turned ex-Janata Dal (United) leader Pavan Varma, former cricketer Kirti Azad who had been in both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, and former Congress Lok Sabha MP Ashok Tanwar joined Bengal’s ruling party, marking the TMC’s biggest single-day haul in the national capital.

Tanwar, who was once a close aide of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, quit the party in 2019 to float Apna Bharat Morcha. After his induction, Banerjee maintained that the TMC family is “now complete”.

“I have told Tanwar to work in Haryana, and whenever he calls me, I will go there to campaign,” Banerjee said. She added that Tanwar will also be asked to campaign in Goa elections next year.

Tanwar, a former president of the Congress’s youth arm Indian Youth Congress, was known for his organisational skills. He fell out with the dominant section of the Haryana Congress unit and quit the party.

“Glad to be part of @AITCofficia. Indian politics is at a rare crossroads today - on one hand we’re witnessing triumph of optics, on other, tragedies of the marginalized and poor continue. The real issues are getting buried - we need a new politics to turn the tide!” Tanwar tweeted.

Varma and Azad can serve as important national voices for the TMC that appears to no longer be content as Bengal’s top party. With 2024 elections due in less than three years, it wants to gain prominence at the national level and sees a scope for expansion with the Congress is on decline.

“I’ll work under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee and I’ll work at the ground level. India today needs a political personality like her at the Centre,” said Azad.

“TMC has the potential to become a principal challenge to the BJP,” Varma told news channel India Today.

A few months ago, the TMC inducted two senior Congress leaders, Sushmita Dev and Luizinho Faleiro, leading to uneasiness at the top level of the Congress party.

This is the first time the TMC is aggressively inducting national-level leaders. Its third consecutive victory in the Bengal assembly election in May put the party in a prominent position nationally and its leaders say that the outfit is the only one capable of taking on the BJP effectively.