Akhilesh backs Didi in Opposition jigsaw
KANPUR/KOLKATA: Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Friday welcomed West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s initiative to forge a national front against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), appearing to throw his weight behind the Trinamool Congress (TMC) that kept up its high-decibel attack on the Congress for a third straight day.
Yadav, who is touring the poll-bound state to galvanise support for his party, was asked in Jhansi whether he will consider joining the Opposition alliance as envisioned by Banerjee.
“I welcome Mamata Banerjee; the way she finished the BJP in Bengal, the SP will finish the BJP in Uttar Pradesh,” he said, a day after party leaders indicated that Banerjee was likely to join his statewide tour and campaign for the SP.
“We will talk about this when the time comes,” he said in response to a question about when the Bengal CM was likely to join the campaign.
Yadav, who was in alliance with the Congress in the previous assembly elections in UP only to slump to a miserable defeat, also said that the Congress is likely to get zero seats in the 2022 assembly elections.
“I don’t know the role of the party in UP politics but the people will reject it,” he said.
The TMC, too, kept up its attack on the Congress and wrote in its mouthpiece, Bengali newspaper Jago Bangla, that the Congress was in the “deep freezer”.
“The TMC has been saying this for a long time that the Congress is a spent force. They don’t have the zeal to fight the BJP. The party is so bogged down by infighting that it hardly has time or energy to build an opposition,” the article titled ‘Congress in deep freezer’ said.
“The country currently needs an alternative front and opposition parties have given that responsibility to Mamata Banerjee. They are looking up to her to fill the vacuum. She is presently the most popular opposition face in the country,” it said. The remarks came amid mounting tensions between the Congress and the TMC, which has been looking to aggressively expand its national footprint since its victory in the West Bengal assembly elections in May. On Wednesday, Banerjee launched an unprecedented, though veiled, attack on the Congress and said the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), a coalition she was a part of, didn’t exist anymore. She said if someone stayed abroad “half the time” and wasn’t on the field, the BJP will “bowl you out”, ostensibly a reference to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
She also pitched for Opposition unity to take on the BJP in the 2024 general election, with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar by her side.
A day later, TMC poll strategist Prashant Kishor, widely credited for the TMC’S victory in Bengal, appeared to expand on the idea. “The IDEA and SPACE that #Congress represents is vital for strong opposition. But Congress’ leadership is not the DIVINE RIGHT of an individual especially, when the party has lost more than 90% elections in last 10 years,” he tweeted. “Let opposition leadership be decided democratically,” he added
In the last three months, the TMC engineered high-profile defections from the Congress, including former Goa chief minister Luizinho Faleiro and ex-assam MP Sushmita Dev. Last week, the TMC poached 12 lawmakers from the Congress in Meghalaya, including former CM Mukul Sangma.
The frenetic moves underlined the listlessness within the Congress that has been roiled by infighting, exit of senior leaders and open dissension on the party’s leadership and direction.
The Congress sought to paint Banerjee as a political opportunist who had no ideological convictions and had forged alliances with the BJP in the past. “The TMC is a broker of the BJP. Every day it is coming up with some things to appease the BJP,” said Adhir Chowdhury, leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha.