Why Mamata needs Congress more than Congress needs her

New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's announcement to go it alone in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections is not her final decision.

It is basically her pressure tactics to force the Congress to accept her offer of two seats - Berhampur and Malda South. The Congress is demanding 10-12 seats and she is not willing to budge. She also does not seem to be inclined to accommodate the Left parties, which apart from the Congress and the Trinamool Congress are also members of the INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) bloc.

Banerjee understands that going it alone by the Trinamool Congress will indirectly help the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A multi-cornered contest will obviously result in the division of votes and thus help the BJP in a similar way it helped the saffron party in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, winning 18 of the 42 seats in the state. While the Trinamool Congress won 22, the Congress bagged 2.

However, the Trinamool Congress soon bounced back and swept the 2021 assembly, winning 215 of the 294 seats. The BJP won 77 seats. The big win of the Trinamool Congress then was largely attributed to the consolidation of the Muslim vote in its favour. The minorities decided to dump the Congress-Left combine to hand over a stupendous victory to the Trinamool Congress as they believed that only Banerjee could defeat the BJP.

But that situation has now changed. The Muslims are not happy with Banerjee over her government’s style of functioning and there is a possibility that some of them could shift to Congress this time. As it is, the Congress is of late getting good traction among the minorities across the country as evident from the election results in Karnataka, Telangana and other states where assembly polls were held last year.

A division of the Muslim vote is bad news mainly for the Trinamool Congress and a Congress-Left alliance could pose a tough challenge for Banerjee in North Bengal.

Having said that, it is the political compulsion for both the Congress and the Trinamool Congress to join hands and contest the upcoming Lok Sabha alliance in alliance and prevent the BJP from repeating its 2019 performance. The Left parties also understand that their voters will shift to the BJP rather than side with the Trinamool Congress.

It now remains to be seen if a conciliatory statement by the Congress that “it cannot imagine the INDIA bloc without Mamata Banerjee” would pacify the Trinamool Congress supremo.