Bengal: Why There Is Little Chance Of Seat-Sharing Deal Between Congress And Trinamool For 2024

Trinamool Congress Chairperson Mamata Banerjee may be a prime votary of an anti-BJP alliance at the national level, but there is little chance of such an alliance shaping up in her own state. 

State Congress leaders who met party president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi Wednesday (December 20) voiced their strong opposition to any seat-sharing deal with the Trinamool in Bengal. 

Led by state party chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Bengal Congress leaders told Kharge and Gandhi that an alliance with the Trinamool was not possible in Bengal. In fact, they said, such a tie-up would be suicidal for Congress in the state.

“We told our top leadership that the Trinamool is out to completely decimate us in Bengal. Mamata Banerjee has either enticed and lured away many from our ranks, or set her goons on us. Thousands of Congress workers have been attacked, injured and killed, and driven out of their homes, over the last 12 years that she has been in power in the state,” a top Congress leader who was part of the delegation told Swarajya. 

Any tie-up with the Trinamool would be extremely demoralising for Congress workers in Bengal and would amount to disrespecting the sacrifices they have made, the Bengal leaders told Kharge and Gandhi. 

What will surely rankle Mamata Banerjee is the charge levelled by the Bengal Congress leaders that she is ‘autocratic’ and ‘undemocratic’. 

“A tie-up with a party led by an autocratic and dictatorial person who has no respect for democracy and democratic functioning will go against the values that the Congress believes in,” said a senior Bengal Congress leader. 

“Allowing the opposition space to function freely in a healthy manner is the very essence of democracy. Mamata Banerjee does not believe in democratic principles and has been trying to decimate the opposition. She has let loose her party cadres innumerable times to attack and kill opposition workers. She lures away leaders and workers from other parties,” the Congress leader told Kharge. 

The Bengal Congress delegation pointed to the example of Bayron Biswas, the MLA from Sagardighi Assembly constituency who was elected in a by-election in March this year. Biswas was the lone Congress MLA in the state Assembly; the Congress had failed to win even a single seat in the 2021 Assembly elections. 

“But Mamata Banerjee could not tolerate the presence of even one Congress MLA in the state assembly. She lured away Biswas and made him join the Trinamool in May. The Trinamool enjoys a brute majority in the Assembly and there was absolutely no need to lure away our MLA. But she did it because she does not believe in allowing the presence of any opposition. She is autocratic. We cannot align with such a person and the party she leads,”  a vice-president of the Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee is reported to have told Rahul Gandhi.

The Bengal Congress leaders are also reported to have told Kharge and Gandhi that no commitment to a tie-up in Bengal should be made by the party’s central leadership without taking the state unit into confidence. 

Rahul Gandhi is said to have hastily clarified that he made no commitment to Mamata Banerjee on seat-sharing between the Trinamool and the Congress in Bengal.

“A tie-up with the Trinamool will lead to the Congress being obliterated from Bengal. Our workers will see it as a sign of betrayal by the leadership and will leave the party en masse. The Congress will be rooted out from Bengal,” senior leader and former Union minister Deepa Das Munshi told Swarajya. 

Adhir Chowdhury said at the meeting that the Congress should maintain its alliance with the CPI(M). “We ought to strengthen our party organisation. Our alliance with the left worked well in Sagardighi and we ought to increase the synergy with the left,” he told Kharge and Gandhi. 

Chowdhury told Swarajya that both Kharge and Gandhi were appreciative of the concerns raised by the state Congress leaders. The two said they would consider the views, expressed unanimously, against an alliance with the Trinamool in Bengal. 

Other party leaders told Swarajya that party president Kharge conveyed to Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury after Wednesday’s meeting that since the state Congress was against any tie-up with the Trinamool, the wishes of the state party unit would be respected. 

Thus, the much-touted INDI alliance will, in all probability, not take off in Bengal. And its two main constituents — the Congress and the Trinamool — will battle it out with each other next year.