By warming up to old foe Congress, the Trinamool leader wants to check BJP
Mamata Banerjee’s recalibration of her politics has been stunning. From being a fierce critic of the Congress — which she left in a huff and formed the Trinamool Congress — she has now come so close to the party that often there is little to differentiate between the two on many issues in the recent public domain. From taking on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the demonetisation decision and the heat on her senior party leaders over the Narada and Saradha scams to questioning his secular credentials, the West Bengal Chief Minister has begun to look like a carbon copy of the Congress. Now she is seeking to work in tandem with the Congress to project a ‘consensus' candidate for the President's post.
All this is very well for a party which has suddenly realised that it cannot take on Modi on its own at the national level, but where does the new bonhomie leave the left FrontIJ It is obvious that Banerjee is working overtime to wean the Congress away from the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led influence. It needs to be recalled that only recently, the left and the Congress had come to a tacit electoral understanding to confront the Trinamool Congress — an attempt that failed to bring relief to either of the two partners, since Mamata Banerjee's party swept the election. If the Congress and the Trinamool Congress come together, it's hardly likely that the left will be part of such a grouping. The West Bengal Chief Minister had, no doubt, recently extended an olive branch to the left by saying it would welcome the latter’s participation in projecting a ‘secular' candidate as the country's next President. But given the recent history of animosity between the Marxists and the Trinamool Congress, not only at the senior leadership level but also right down to the grassroots, a durable compromise between the two rivals is not going to happen.
Mamata Banerjee has been shrewd to shift her focus from the left to the Bharatiya Janata Party, while getting close to the Congress. She realises that the left no longer poses any real threat to her present hegemony in West Bengal, since the Marxists and their allies have been repeatedly rejected by the State's electorate. The challenge she faces is from a resurgent BJP. In recent polls, BJP candidates have finished second behind the Trinamool representatives, thus pushing the left to the third spot. The BJP’s rise is unlikely to be reversed in the coming months, with party president Amit Shah devoting a great amount of attention to the BJP's fortunes in the State. The party’s task of denting Banerjee's hold, although difficult, has been made somewhat easy by the Trinamool Congress's brazen appeasement policies in favour of the minorities. The electorate is likely in the coming months to be influenced by the Modi regime's slogan (which has been effectively executed across the nation in the last three years) of ‘development for all and appeasement of none'. Mamata Banerjee has her work cut out.