Mamata needs a star cast to be PM

Amitabh Tiwari

Mamata Banerjee was reelected as Chairperson of the Trinamool Congress at an event on Wednesday. Throwing caution to the wind and making her national ambitions clear, Mamata said that Trinamool will support Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh in state elections 2022 and it will be contesting the Lok Sabha polls in the state in 2024. Bolstered by her success in state polls earlier this year, Mamata has thrown in her hat for the Prime Ministerial race against Narendra Modi.

The gateway to Delhi passes through Uttar Pradesh, as it sends the maximum MPs (80) to the Lower House. Mamata realises that without a presence in the Hindi heartland, it is very difficult to capture power at the centre.

She called for a united fight against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by all regional parties in the 2024 elections.

The Trinamool has been on an expansion spree since its victory against the BJP in West Bengal in 2021. As many as 12 out of 17 MLAs of the Congress party in Meghalaya led by former Chief Minister Mukul Sangma joined the Trinamool in a midnight coup in November last year.

The Trinamool has poached many Congress leaders such as Abhijit Mukherjee, Sushmita Dev, Ashok Tanwar, Kirti Azad and Luizinho Falerio. The party now has local faces in Assam, Goa, Tripura, Meghalaya, Haryana. It has now set its eyes on Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Mamata understands the limitations of the Trinamool, which got almost 100% of its votes from Bengal in the 2019 general elections. It has a near-zero presence outside of its home state. There is not enough time left before 2024 to expand the party’s base organically in other states.

With the grand old party, the Congress, weakening over the years, Mamata has adopted the inorganic route by poaching disgruntled leaders from Congress and other parties. This has helped provide instant visibility to the Trinamool in the abovementioned states.

While these leaders joining Trinamool is good optics for the party at the national level, the party needs real meaty leaders or a large chunk of big leaders (like the G-23 of Congress) to jump ship and make a real impact.

The Trinamool hopes that if the results of the upcoming Assembly elections are unfavorable for the Congress, then it could trigger a big exodus. Declaring that the party will contest the Uttar Pradesh poll shows she expects some leaders from the Congress in the state to join Trinamool. Increasingly, regional forces are now coming around the fact that they will have to take up the mantle as Congress is embroiled in setting its house in order.

Mamata, through this exercise, is trying to emerge as the leader of anti-BJP forces in the public eye. The party hopes she can then bargain from a position of strength with these satraps and convince them to back her as Prime Ministerial candidate.

Mamata is also becoming the rallying point for leaders who have backed the BJP earlier but are now out of favour, like Subramanian Swamy. More leaders joining the Trinamool shows her acceptability as a consensus mass leader. However, she has to be careful. Her ambition could scare away some satraps.

Regional leaders who have had a shot at the top slot have seen their careers waning after a stint at the top – VP Singh, Chandrasekhar, Deve Gowda, Chaudhary Charan Singh.

Congress still has around 20% vote share at the national level and the Trinamool needs to get a major portion of this to become the real challenger to the BJP. Most leaders who have joined the party at the national level lack mass appeal.

big guns yet who can get votes outside of Bengal. Mamata also doesn’t belong to the Hindi heartland, which has given India the majority of its Prime Ministers. To pull down the number one party, the Trinamool should first become the number-two party of India. This strategy, however, could further divide the opposition vote and indirectly help the BJP in 2024. Is it the end of the road for a united opposition fight against the BJP, and only time will tell whether Mamata succeeds or not.

(The author is an independent political commentator. The article originally appeared in the The Quint)