Mamata Banerjee loses pole position in Opposition

Recent actions of Trinamool Congress (TMC) Chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will undoubtedly weaken her candidature as the fulcrum of Opposition unity. Her conduct in the election of the president and the vice-president confirms her image as an unpredictable leader.

She has refused to support Margret Alva as the consensus Opposition candidate for vice-president, allegedly upset at not being consulted. Her party MPs have also refused to join Opposition protests in Parliament against price-rise, growing unemployment and imposition of GST on retail sale of essential food items.

Despite having proposed Yashwant Sinha as the Opposition candidate for President, Banerjee did not campaign for him. She may have delivered her party’s votes in his favour, but she did not want him to visit West Bengal. Perhaps Banerjee did not want to be seen as pitting herself against Droupadi Murmu, given that the Santhal population of West Bengal is nearly three times that of Odisha and slightly more than half of the total tribal population of the state. It would explain why she said she would have supported Murmu had the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) consulted her.

But there are no political excuses for withdrawing support for Margret Alva as vice-presidential candidate. Media reports say that Congress president Sonia Gandhi called Banerjee twice regarding a common candidate of the Opposition for vice-president and she was told that the TMC would support anyone chosen by the Opposition. This is also what Banerjee is reported to have told Nationalist Congress Party leader, Sharad Pawar.

It has been suggested that Banerjee’s opposition to Alva may be because unlike Yashwant Sinha, Alva’s antecedents lie with the Congress Party, a party she sees herself in direct competition with. However, critics suggest that Banerjee’s decision to not oppose the ruling dispensation’s candidate Jagdeep Dhankar is part of a deal cut with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). On July 13, Banerjee met with the West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma at the Darjeeling Raj Bhavan. Sarma’s presence had intrigued observers as he is seen as BJP’s hatchet man in the North-east. Dhankar was announced as BJP’s candidate for Vice-President just three days after that meeting.

What would Banerjee gain from such a purported deal? It may be pure coincidence that the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) first charge-sheet in a multi-crore coal smuggling case, filed on July 20, in which 41 individuals were implicated, the names of TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, nephew of the chief minister, and his wife Rujira Narula Banerjee, are absent.  This is despite the fact that the couple was questioned several times by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the CBI, especially regarding an alleged transfer of a large sum of money from Bangkok to one Rujira Narula (who ED claims was Rujira Narula Banerjee) by the main accused, Anup Majhi, alias Lala. The omission led former MP Mohammad Saleem, state secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist) to say that, “Mamata Banerjee chose to break Opposition’s unity in exchange for the omission of her nephew’s [Abhishek Banerjee] name from the CBI’s charge-sheet on the coal scam.”

However, if that was the quid pro quo then how can one explain the subsequent arrest by the ED of the chief minister’s right-hand man and Minister for Industry and Commerce Partha Chatterjee on July 23? On July 22, in a raid on Arpita Mukherjee, an associate of Chatterjee, the ED recovered Rs 21 crore in cash, jewellery worth Rs 52 lakh, and 22 mobile phones whose use the agency is trying to ascertain. The raid related to an alleged teacher recruitment scam in Bengal said to have taken place in 2014 when Chatterjee held the portfolio of Higher Education and School Education, which he held till 2021. The ED claims that the cash found at Mukherjee’s house is linked to accusations that the minister allegedly ensured jobs to candidates lower on the merit list in exchange for money. The ED raids were also conducted on Minister of State for Education Paresh C Adhikary, party MLA Manik Bhattacharya and others.

The TMC’s tepid response to Chatterjee’s arrest (“TMC will not interfere”) is surprising and Banerjee’s public silence on the arrest of her minister’s is uncharacteristic of her. Recall that in the Narada scam she had staged a day-long dharna outside the CBI office in May 2021 when two of her ministers -- Subrata Mukherjee and Firad Hussain – and party MLA Madan Mitra and Kolkata Mayor Sovan Chatterjee were arrested. She also went on a dharna for CBI attempting to raid Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar.

The chief minister’s critics allege that she has thrown Patha Chatterjee under the bus to protect her nephew. This speculation, they say, must be seen against the expectation that a generational change in the TMC is likely to be spelt out more clearly in the course of the coming year. Banerjee’s many confrontations with former Governor Dhankar, her political opponents claim, were nothing more than shadow boxing. They claim that these ‘mock fights’ created a polarisation that benefited both the TMC and the BJP.

After having painted him black during his tenure as Bengal Governor, Mamata Banerjee’s decision to not oppose Dhankar is bound to provide wind to the Opposition’s sails in the state. If allegations of a compromise with the BJP gain ground, then Banerjee will be weakened amongst her minority supporters. Muslims form more than 30 per cent of the electorate in Bengal and had voted en masse for the TMC in the last assembly elections. She may have just created the ground for the revival of the Congress and the Left parties in Bengal.

Most importantly, her maverick conduct will alienate her from the Opposition parties nationally, especially those who were willing to support her as leader of an Opposition alliance. This included not only stalwarts like Sharad Pawar but also sizable sections of the Congress. Banerjee could have just lost more than she has gained by her recent decisions.