In a move loaded with positive vibes for Mamata Banerjee, the Congress on Friday made some sudden and crucial changes in the Pradesh Congress brass by removing State party president Adhir Chowdhury — a proclaimed anti-Mamata face — and bringing in his place a more accommodative Somen Mitra a septuagenarian leader.
Chowdhury has been made the chairman of the election (campaign) committee while other three senior leaders: AH Khan Chowdhury, a South Malda MP, Shankar Malakar and Deepa Dasmunshi have been made the acting vice presidents of the State unit, sources said.
There was no word from Chowdhury who has been in favour of a Left-Congress, rather than Congress-TMC alliance in the 2019 general elections as — “Mamata Banerjee has ruined our party organisation after we allied with her by engineering defections with blatant use of money and muscle power.”
Mitra was the PCC president in 1998. Following serious differences with him Banerjee the then Youth Congress split the party to form her own Trinamool Congress. Since then much water had flowed down the Hooghly with Mitra himself joining the TMC in 2009, winning from the Diamond Harbour MP constituency before quitting that party to rejoin the Congress again.
Chowdhury has earlier went on record saying that there would be no alliance with the Trinamool Congress till he was at the helm.
When asked to comment on whether he too would pursue the same anti-Trinamool policy in respect of electoral alliances, Mitra said he was “none to take a decision on the issue. It is for the high command to take a decision on alliances. When they will ask my opinion about the issue I will give it.”
On what his opinion was regarding the longevity of a Congress-TMC alliance if it really became a reality, he said “as of now if we ally with the TMC then definitely we will get some seats from Bengal. But in the long run we will lose organizationally as has been seen through the past experiences when TMC has engineered defections in the Congress.”