‘Mamata is an asset to the opposition’
Interview with Om Prakash Mishra, who left the Congress for the Trinamool in 2019.
IN 2019, at a time when defections from the Trinamool Congress to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were the trend in West Bengal, Om Prakash Mishra, veteran Congress leader and party vice president, joined the Trinamool, claiming that it was the only party that could take on the rising
BJP in the State. Mishra, a professor at
Jadavpur University, is a member of the
Trinamool’s core committee and its spokesperson. In an interview to Frontline, he talks about the Trinamool’s repeated political allegations against the Congress and the cold war between the two parties.
“The Congress leadership is either absent or dithers and often fails to take on the BJP juggernaut effectively,” he says. Excerpts.
There is a perception that the Trinamool is trying to take over the Congress’ place as the main opponent of the BJP at the national level. Is this correct?
India is a very big country with 543 Lok Sabha constituencies. No single political formation is either present or represented throughout the country. The Trinamool is the pre-eminent political party in the third largest State. As such, the ideological and political opposition to the BJP has to be channelised through parties like the Trinamool. We have never claimed to be the only alternative to the BJP. In fact, time and again our leader Mamata Banerjee has called for consistent, cohesive and contributory efforts throughout the country to fight the BJP. As a big party, the Indian National Congress is an important constituent in any such effort that can be organised at the national level. Mutuality and interdependence among parties opposed to the BJP are a necessity that has repeatedly been articulated by the Trinamool. We would like to broaden the coalition on the basis of issues and agendas against one of the most disastrous Union governments at the Centre. Effective articulation, necessary coordination and an accommodative approach can illuminate the path of the opposition to victory in 2024. The Trinamool is willing to play its due role, complement other parties’ efforts and help build up synergies.
So why this war of words?
Every political party has certain limitations in the political geography of our vast country. We are lacking physical presence in many States, and so is the case with the Congress. In Maharashtra and Jharkhand, the Congress is part of the government led by other political parties. In West Bengal, it has no representation in the Assembly. In the recent byelections in Assam and other north-eastern States, the Congress could not win a single seat. Unfortunately, the Congress could not sustain its governments in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. Again, despite having a close shot at forming the government, it squandered away its advantage and the BJP formed governments in Goa and Manipur. The Congress arrogantly believes itself to be the only opposition. Everyone will agree that the opposition needs to get its act together. Mamata Banerjee has been repeatedly saying this. But we do not see any initiative from the Congress to participate and help build up a coalition of parties opposed to the BJP. As a result, coordination among the parties has become a casualty. Again, why should all the parties opposed to the BJP not come together? What about CPI(ML) [Communist Party of India-marxist Leninist]? After all, it is part of the Mahagatbandhan led by the RJD [Rashtriya Janata Dal] in Bihar.
You were a prominent Congress leader before joining the Trinamool in 2019. What are the main differences between the Trinamool’s opposition to the BJP, and the Congress’?
The Trinamool is focussed, consistent, and has a much better understanding of ground realities. As Abhishek Banerjee [national general secretary of the Trinamool and Mamata Banerjee’s nephew] pointed out, while the Congress has been ceding space to the BJP, the Trinamool has been repeatedly winning against it.
On the matter of leadership, Mamata Banerjee is endowed with exceptional qualities as an administrator and can steer public policy in a most effective way. Unfortunately, the Congress leadership is either absent or dithers and often fails to take on the BJP juggernaut. This weakens the fight of the people of the country against the manifold and staggering failures of the [Narendra] Modi government. The Congress and the CPI(M) [Communist Party of India (Marxist)] in Bengal are yet to offer an explanation in the public domain as to how and why they allowed the BJP to usurp the opposition space in the Lok Sabha election in 2019. How come the BJP secured about 40 per cent of the votes? The Trinamool is the only political party in the country which has been consistently increasing its vote share, even in the 2019 election. So, my joining the Trinamool Congress was to strengthen Mamata Banerjee’ resolve to take on the BJP.
Is it realistic at the moment to think of a non-bjp government at the Centre without the Congress?
The political geography of the Indian parliamentary system does not sit comfortably with this proposition. A coalition of willing political parties is a prerequisite to defeat the BJP. However, the contour of such opposition to the BJP should be located in different States differently. As such, an interdependent matrix has to be evolved, preferably before the election. Mamata Banerjee is best suited to bring different parties opposed to the BJP together. She has repeatedly disowned a leadership role for herself. All the leaders are important, but there are advantages she represents. The Trinamool’s success in defeating the BJP in a comprehensive way in Bengal is a national reference point for the people in the country. She has won seven Lok Sabha elections, has served the Council of Ministers under three different Prime Ministers, and the Trinamool has also been elected thrice in West Bengal under her leadership. She is an asset to the opposition and must be cultivated and supported by all right-thinking, liberal, secular people and political parties to usher in a non-bjp government in India. I should add that Mamata Banerjee has been categorical that the question of leadership is not the issue. Building up a coalition against the BJP is the main issue. It is natural for supporters to root for their own parties and believe their leader is the leader of the next government. However, it is a disaster to imprison the much-needed efforts for unity of the opposition parties merely on the basis of a liking or desire for one single party.
You are talking of coalition and cohesion, but the Trinamool is challenging the Congress in Goa and Tripura.
Both Tripura and Goa are ruled by the BJP. The Congress squandered its chances in Goa, and in Tripura the Congress could not win a single seat. We are not going to counter the Congress in these two States but the ruling BJP. By definition, political parties tend to expand their base and support. The Congress is fighting us in Bengal, it is fighting the CPI(M) in Kerala, and it fought the RJD in Bihar in the byelection. There can always be cooperation, but let us admit there will be elements of competition too. Can we say that the Congress is trying to mar the pitch for Akhilesh Yadav? Can we ask why the Congress put up candidates against the RJD in the bypolls? Is it not a fact that five BSP [Bahujan Samajwadi Party] MLAS joined the Congress? Kanhaiya Kumar left the CPI [Communist Party of India] for the Congress. Why is only the Trinamool being blamed? After all, we have every right to expand our presence and sharpen our opposition to the BJP like any other political party. This is what we are doing and fortunately there is a dynamism and momentum in the TMC’S forward march. the BJP. But Abhishek Banerjee adopted a belligerent tone as he accused the Congress of being an “armchair warrior” that ought to “hit the streets” like the Trinamool had done. “If the Congress cannot defeat the BJP, the Trinamool will do it,” he said.
The statements by Mamata Banerjee and her nephew have been interpreted as a rejection of the Congress in the upcoming fight against the BJP. In fact, their attacks against the grand old party have been as consistent and scathing as their barbs at the saffron party. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Congress stalwart from West Bengal and Leader of the Congress Party in the Lok Sabha, told Frontline: “She is more vituperative against the Congress than even the BJP. Sometimes I am confused as to who her political opponent is. I am really getting dumbfounded.”
A section of political observers interprets the Trinamool’s moves as nothing more than blatant political expansionism. But the Congress believes they form a concerted effort to destroy the party and thereby help the BJP. Labelling Mamata Banerjee as “the Trojan horse of the Modi government”, Adhir Chowdhury said: “Electoral politics is nothing but electoral arithmetic to capture power. I don’t know what kind of arithmetic the Trinamool is following. In order to ascend to power we need as many as 273 Lok Sabha seats. I don’t know how and by what magic the Trinamool supremo can harness the numbers required to replace the BJP. We can easily come to the conclusion that 63 per cent of the popular votes have been cast against the BJP. Out of the 63 per cent, the Congress alone accounts for 20 per cent, and the Trinamool accounts for around 4 per cent. I don’t see the merit of any argument that says Modi can be dethroned without the Congress.”
According to Adhir Chowdhury, the Trinamool may be trying to help the BJP by targeting the Congress in order to escape from the clutches of the Central investigative agencies that are looking into alleged malpractices of some Trinamool leaders. “It is intriguing to note that on August 20, the Trinamool supremo attended a meeting with nine parties convened by Sonia Gandhi, and it was unanimously decided that all opposition parties would act together to dislodge the ruling dispensation. The very same supremo had earlier met all the opposition leaders, including Sonia Gandhi. But on September 6, soon after her nephew was examined by the Enforcement Directorate in Delhi, both the nephew and the supremo started hurling diatribes against the Congress without any rhyme or reason. Within a few days the entire Trinamool party started going hammer and tongs at us,” said Adhir Chowdhury.
Even a local Trinamool leader like Kunal Ghosh, who has no substantial mass base, took a swipe at Rahul Gandhi on social media, calling him a “part-time politician who has failed to combat the BJP”. Ghosh’s reaction came after Rahul Gandhi’s observation that while the Congress was prevented by the Uttar Pradesh government from visiting Lakhimpur Kheri, the Trinamool and the Bhim Army were allowed. “Rahul Gandhi should
know: @Aitcofficial MPS are in Lakhimpur after a long fight. In Tripura, BJP imposed 144 throughout Agartala only to prevent @abhishekaitc. INC is a loser in their traditional UP including Amethi. But TMC defeated BJP in Bengal. INC made Punjab a mess,” Ghosh tweeted.
Besides trying to rally together anti-bjp parties for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Mamata Banerjee has also been trying, quite openly, to spread the Trinamool’ influence and strengthen its organisation in States where the Congress has considerable sway. The Trinamool’s forays into Bjp-ruled Tripura and Goa are being perceived as a twopronged attack—to challenge the BJP and at the same time usurp the Congress’ space as the main opposition in these States. In Tripura, too, the Trinamool seems to be relying on large-scale defections from the Congress to build up a base. According to a Congress source, the Trinamool is trying to take advantage of the “present state of the Congress” in different States in order to demolish the organisation completely and replace it with its own organisation. “A section of opportunistic Congress leaders is being enticed with plum positions and Rajya Sabha nominations. They are being misled into believing this is best for their career,” said the source.
In August, Sushmita Dev, former Congress Member of Parliament from Silchar, Assam, and president of the All India Mahila Congress, joined the Trinamool. She was immediately given a Rajya Sabha nomination and important responsibilities in Assam and Tripura.
Birajit Sinha, president of the Tripura Pradesh Congress Committee, does not believe that the Trinamool’s attempts to set up base in other States will succeed. “Mamata Banerjee believes she will be able to make a dent in other States, but hers is a regional party; and a regional party is restricted to its own State. The Congress is her oxygen. She may attack it now, but when the need arises she will seek the Congress’ help,” Birajit Sinha told Frontline.
‘WEST BENGAL MODEL’
The well-known political observer and psephologist Biswanath Chakraborty described the Trinamool’s strategy of targeting the Congress in other States as the “West Bengal model”, one which seeks to decimate the Congress and replace it with the Trinamool. “Initially, Mamata Banerjee could not manage to win over a single MLA from the Left. But she broke the Congress and ultimately destroyed the Left. Now she wants to use the same strategy in other States and at the same time question the credibility of the central leadership of the Congress. She has now taken the place that Mulayam Singh
Yadav occupied in the 1990s. Just as the Muslims then believed that Mulayam could stop the BJP, they now feel it is Mamata Banerjee who can defeat the Modi-amit Shah rule. She is virtually representing the minority vote bank of the Congress,” he said. While the strategy may work in the Trinamool’s favour, there is also a chance of it backfiring and working to the BJP’S advantage by splitting the opposition votes. “However, Mamata Banerjee’s politics is very flexible and aimed at maximising her political gains. If this strategy is not working to her advantage, she may very well take a U-turn,” said Chakraborty.
The Congress, for its part, has not only showed restraint about the Trinamool’s repeated barbs, but also extended an olive branch to it by not fielding any candidate for the Bhabanipur seat in the byelection, which was contested and won by Mamata Banerjee. Amitabha Chakraborty, senior Congress leader from West Bengal, told Frontline: “When there are talks of a united front against the BJP, the Congress does not want to rock the boat, and that is the reason it did not even put up a candidate in Bhabanipur. The Congress is looking at the bigger picture here.”
THE PRASHANT KISHOR FACTOR
The Trinamool’s election strategist Prashant Kishor, who incidentally met the Gandhi family to discuss Congress’s revival plans earlier this year, also got into the fray. Tweeting on the Lakhimpur Kheri incident, he posted: “People looking for a quick, spontaneous revival of GOP [Grand Old Party] led opposition based on #Lakhimpurkheri incident are setting themselves up for a big disappointment. Unfortunately there are no quick fix solutions to the deep-rooted problems and structural weakness of GOP.” Later he was heard saying, in a video of a private meeting in Goa, that Rahul Gandhi was mistaken to believe that the BJP could easily be removed from Indian politics: “That is where the problem lies with Rahul Gandhi. Probably, he thinks it’s just a matter of time that people will throw him [Modi] away. That’s not happening.”
According to Adhir Chowdhury, Kishor is the “bridge” between the Trinamool and the Modi government. “He has been playing the facilitator for the Modi regime to continue. In 2014, the same Mr Poll Strategist had coined the words ‘Acche din’, and the same person in 2021 coined the battle cry for the ruling party of Bengal, ‘Duarey Sarkar’. There is certainly some hidden agenda here, and that is why, in spite of all the oppression mounted on the BJP workers in the State, the central BJP leadership is reticent,” Chowdhury said. m