Suvendu fills vacuum of Opposition politics in Bengal
Adhikari is perhaps the first ever politician in the state to lay bare the systematic abuse of Central schemes by TMC.
Harold Laski felt that the leader of the opposition is the guardian of the legislative rights of the opposition and said “without effective generalship, the opposition case goes by default”. How correct was Laski could be seen from the experience of opposition politics in West Bengal. When West Bengal was born, after a partitioned independence, there was Jyoti Basu leading among the multiple political parties opposing the ruling Congress to stand up against a charismatic Chief Minister, Dr Bidhan Chandra Ray. If the splinter opposition parties could eventually form a coalition government in the fourth general election, the first one West Bengal Congress faced after the demise of Dr Ray, a large part of the credit goes to the effective role played by Basu. Since then, particularly during the 34 long years of the Left Front rule first headed by Basu, there was no sign of any effective leader of the opposition in West Bengal. The same tradition continued during the first two terms of the current Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Neither CPM nor Congress, the two leading opposition parties in the state, could place any effective face to counter the dictatorial tendency that successive chief ministers in West Bengal, including Mamata Banerjee, displayed since Basu set the trend rolling. Without an effective generalship, as Laski said, the ruling party rule in West Bengal continued unchecked.
The above narrative may be challenged on the ground of Mamata Banerjee’s role in the ouster of the Left Front in 2011. The fact that she was the only politician who had been consistent in opposing the Left rule cannot be denied. Broadly, one concludes that since Mamata emerged as the leader after the loss of the then incumbent chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, she was the general leading the march against the Left Front. But the conclusion so derived can be faulted on several counts. First and foremost is the fact that Mamata was never in the state assembly opposing the state’s ruling government. She was always in the Lok Sabha with no record of opposing the policies of the Left Front government. True, she had joined several agitations which included agitation over land acquisition for industry by the Buddhadeb Bhattacharya government but these were effectively participating in spontaneous local grievances. Seen closely, her role was more opportunist than “generalship” that Laski expected from the leader of opposition. Second and no less important is the fact that she did never raise any substantive issue of mismanagement of administration or economy by the Left front government. The Singur-nandigram agitation was more like adding some fuel to a fire than expression of an alternate developmental rhetoric. She was thrust to the front by the simmering opposition of several vested interest groups and also dissenting elements from within the Left Front.
However, one cannot deny the need of a leader to stand
as a symbol to oppose a ruling government. Mamata Banerjee thus emerged as one leading the opposition to Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. Knowing fully well the critical role of the leader in opposition, something that she got primarily by virtue of her consistent presence in the scene, Mamata ensured that during her first two terms as chief minister neither CPM nor Congress could create some face to bring “generalship” in the opposition camp. She had the advantages of having a BJP government at the centre, a party which lacked any major political presence in West Bengal. That Mamata is a smart politician was evident when after her third election victory in 2021 she hoped that her former ally Mukul Ray would be chosen as BJP’S parliamentary party leader in the state assembly. Mukul had defected to BJP for reasons relating more to legal issues than ideology. In Mukul Ray then Mamata could have had the third lame duck leader of opposition.
That BJP, too, was no less savvy than Mamata was demonstrated when Suvendu Adhikari, a former youth leader of Mamata’s party and a new defector to BJP was selected as BJP’S leader of opposition in the assembly. BJP central leadership realised that it would not progress further in West Bengal without the “generalship” of a local leader, mere charisma of Narendra Modi could not take them any further. The party did not have any politically mature and battle-scarred face like Suvendu Adhikari. Its then president Dilip Ghosh was politically green-horn, coming from its sister organisation RSS and that too from outside the state. Mukul Ray was not trusted at all by the central leadership. Suvendu was new to the party but was a giant killer and had defeated Mamata in election. He had thus burnt his prospect of crashing back to the ruling TMC. More important Suvendu is ambitious and knew well enough that he would at best have a side role in Mamata’s TMC. He was viewed as a hurdle for political ascendancy of Mamata’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee. That is why there was a trap laid for him through the oft-used “cash and video capture” scam called Narada scam. Both BJP and Suvendu, therefore, took the risk in 2021 of starting afresh in
West Bengal.
Suvendu has so far proved his “generalship” ability. He works relentlessly, running from one corner of the state to another. He knows the political schemes and scams of the ruling TMC and is perhaps the first ever politician in the state who laid bare the systematic abuse of Central schemes by the ruling TMC. Thus when Mamata announced that she would sit on a “dharna” in Kolkata against the stepmotherly treatment of the Modi government, Suvendu was there in Delhi to lay bare to the national media the trickeries of the state government. The much publicised “dharna” of Mamata thus attracted little attention outside the Kolkata’s captive media. When Suvendu is gagged inside the assembly, he talks to media outside the assembly gate and exposes the state government. He is seen in support of any issue that can embarrass the ruling party often enough filing cases before the High Court. In Suvendu Adhikari BJP got what it never had in the state, a political face who can lead the party even without the bureaucratic governor’s support or sermons from Delhi. Since Jyoti Basu in the formative days of West Bengal, Suvendu has emerged as the leader of opposition who is destined to help BJP fulfil its political dream in not distant future.