Mamata Banerjee wants to shrug it off.
A day after the Trinamool Congress swept the assembly by-elections, the railway minister said the victory wasn’t so much a groundswell of support for her leadership as it was for discontent over Left Front rule.
“I will never call it a pro-Mamata wave,” Banerjee told HT in an exclusive interview. “It is a wave of the people. It is a tsunami unleashed by the very people who backed the Left for 33 years.”
The Front, which has ruled the state since 1977, suffered its first setback in May 2008, when it lost the state panchayat elections. A year later, the opposition in the state swept the Lok Sabha elections.
There is also growing unrest within the Front following the defeats. Fisheries Minister Kiranmoy Nanda of the West Bengal Socialist Party said the Front had lost moral right to rule. HT has learnt that at least eight CPM district secretariats have told the leadership it is getting increasingly difficult for cadre to face the people.