Mamata's 'appeal' to Cong, Left for anti-BJP alliance may yield little

A day after she appealed to the Congress and the Left parties to support her to defeat the BJP in the future, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's government made a U-turn on Thursday and said that her words were misinterpreted. The Trinamool Congress government also sent notices to three major newspapers in Kolkata, which reported the 'appeal' to the Congress and Left. However, the Banerjee government resisted sending notices to other newspapers that had carried the news on the inside pages and not the front page.

The surprise move of the Banerjee government came after both the Congress and Left denounced her appeal, thinking that the move was nothing but an outreach to have an alliance. Sujan Chakraborty of the CPI(M) said it was Banerjee who "brought BJP to Bengal" and so there was no question of having any understanding with her.

Tapas Roy, parliamentary affairs minister, said that Banerjee never mentioned that the TMC would like to have an alliance with the Congress and Left."Yes, she talked about coordination. But that does not mean that she asked for a political alliance as is being reported by some newspapers," Roy said.

On Wednesday, Banerjee was quoted as saying in the state Assembly that the time had come for the Left and Congress to forget the past and think of coming on board to support her to check the "communal BJP".

The desperation of Banerjee came shortly after the Lok Sabha election in which the BJP defeated the TMC in as many as 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats and came second in 22 seats. Banerjee found the BJP was even more emboldened and powerful once she got out of her office and decided to visit some districts. When faced with BJP supporters chanting 'Jai Shri Ram', Banerjee was flustered and even lashed out at those shouting the slogan.

About three dozen TMC leaders have joined the BJP since the Lok Sabha election and about 20 people have been killed in political violence in West Bengal. With more TMC leaders 'almost in position' to defect to the BJP now, Banerjee has found her position shaken.

However, many found Banerjee's appeal for an understanding with the Congress and Left to be surprising as both the parties suffered a huge loss of vote share in the last election. The total vote share of the Congress and Left is not more than 10 per cent. While the Congress vote share mostly shifted to the TMC in the last five years, the Left vote share has steadily moved to the BJP in the same period.

The shifting of vote share to the BJP was strengthened after the bloody 2018 panchayat elections in which more than 50 people were killed due to political violence. There was a perception that BJP activists fought workers of the TMC on the ground and even protected cadres of the CPI(M) and other Left parties. As a result, after the election, the Left supporters moved to the BJP in large numbers.

Political observers see this shift of Left support to the BJP as not an ideological shift but as an expression of the desire of the hardcore Left cadres to defeat Mamata Banerjee. Among political parties, the Left has suffered the most since Banerjee came to power in 2011. The bleeding in the Left parties' presence in West Bengal was unrelenting and its cadres either moved to the TMC or the hardcore, committed cadres remained inactive.

The rise of the BJP has given them an opportunity to defeat the TMC in 2021.

The second worrisome factor for Banerjee would be the machinery of her past associate and now BJP leader Mukul Roy who is on an all-out mission to break the TMC. If Roy succeeds finally, it would be dangerous for Banerjee ahead of the 2021 election.

Interestingly, Banerjee met Prashant Kishore a day after appealing to the Congress and Left for a possible understanding. The rebuttal came after this meeting. Many questioned whether Kishore disapproved of Banerjee's outreach, following which Banerjee asked her party to retract.