On the day Suvendu Adhikari resigned as West Bengal transport minister, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee called a meeting at her residence, which was attended by her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, MP, ministers Partha Chatterjee, Firhad Hakim and Aroop Biswas, and Trinamool Congress general secretary Subrata Bakshi. Surprisingly, senior leader Saugata Roy, MP, who had been talking to Adhikari in an attempt to prevent him from quitting, was not invited to the meeting.
“He had some grievances which I informed our leader of the party,” said Roy. “Talks are continuing, and I believe all is not lost.”
Adhikari, the hero of the Trinamool’s epic movement against land acquisition in Nandigram in 2007, is the most popular leader in the party after Banerjee. She had never allowed a second power centre in the party and was said to be uncomfortable about Adhikari’s clout. “Mamata di knew that if she negotiated with Suvendu, he would not allow her nephew to grow in the party. Suvendu is a leader of the masses; he would have been the future of the party,” said Saumitra Khan, MP, who left the Trinamool for the BJP last year.
The BJP hopes that Adhikari’s exit would nudge other unhappy leaders in the Trinamool to quit, and pave way for the opposition to bring a no-confidence motion against the government. While there are a number of Trinamool MLAs who have expressed their willingness to join the BJP (four of them, in fact, already did), only a mass exodus will overturn the Trinamool’s brute majority in the assembly. The party has 221 members in the 294-strong house.
Mukul Roy, who was Banerjee’s eyes and ears for a long time before quitting the Trinamool and joining the BJP in 2017, was the first to mention that some 110 Trinamool MLAs were in touch with him. “Of course they are in touch with us,” he said. “What is wrong with it? They are feeling asphyxiated in their party.” The BJP hopes that Adhikari’s exit would open the floodgates.
Whether it happens or not, Banerjee’s party is a divided force. Many senior leaders have been raising their voices against the unilateral decisions by the leadership. This is attributed to the rise of the BJP in the state, which has given Trinamool leaders an alternative. However, the blame has been put also on the functioning of the Trinamool. “Mamata Banerjee had once declared that the future of the Trinamool would be Abhishek Banerjee and Suvendu Adhikari,” said a senior leader who did not wish to be identified. “Suvendu would have accepted that if Abhishek and others gave him due respect. When that was gone, he decided to find his own path.”
One of Adhikari’s biggest concerns was the collaboration between Abhishek and political strategist Prashant Kishor, which “created a parallel government” in the state. In fact, the chief minister has been going by what the duo suggested. While Kishor’s involvement has had a positive impact on governance, it has created unrest in the party, with many ministers expressing their resentment over the undue say he has. Some IAS officers also resisted the presence of Kishor’s team in the administrative buildings. Many have expressed their concerns to the chief minister, but she ignored them all.
One of Adhikari’s biggest concerns was the collaboration between Abhishek (Mamata’s nephew) and political strategist Prashant Kishor (in pic), which “created a parallel government” in the state | Salil Bera
Adhikari, however, is not just another leader. Son of former Union minister Sisir Adhikari, he has considerable clout in East Midnapore and Junglemahal. The senior Adhikari, who was the Congress’s face in the region before he left the party with Banerjee, is a member of the Lok Sabha. During the Nandigram movement, the Adhikari family led the campaign against the CPI(M) and its powerful leader Lakshman Seth, who was called the king of the industrial belt of Haldia and East Midnapore. Nandigram, along with the Singur movement, gave Banerjee big political dividends.
In 2009, Banerjee fielded Suvendu Adhikari against Seth in the Lok Sabha election and he scored a thumping victory against the communist heavyweight. When Banerjee came to power in 2011, she replaced Seth with Adhikari as the chairman of the Haldia Development Authority. Adhikari was reelected to the Lok Sabha in 2014, but he had had enough of Delhi and wanted to come back to Bengal. He contested and won the assembly election from Nandigram in 2016, and Banerjee made him a minister.
While there are stories about Adhikari visiting some spiritual gurus while in Delhi and frequenting RSS shakhas in Midnapore as a teen, it is not yet clear if such things would have had a bearing on the political decisions he has to make. Also, he has significant clout among Muslims in East Midnapore. The Nandigram movement had a significant Muslim participation and Adhikari played a big role in swinging Muslim votes in favour of the Trinamool in the 2011 assembly election. “Even after he quit as minister, his meetings ended with namaskar and salam,” said a leader close to Adhikari. “He is a secular leader.”
After the BJP’s spectacular show in the state in the Lok Sabha elections last year, Banerjee gave Adhikari the charge of three assembly bypolls; the Trinamool won all three, including the Kharagpur Sadar constituency vacated by the BJP’s state president Dilip Ghosh when he became a member of the Lok Sabha.
There is a theory that the BJP has been putting pressure on Adhikari using the CBI investigation into the allegations of him taking money in the Narada sting operation. But, Banerjee is clearly not doing enough to keep him in her party.
More than any such theory, what is important is Banerjee’s loosening grip on the party. Top leaders like Arjun Singh and Sovan Chatterjee have revolted against her, and only a few months are left for the assembly elections. It seems she is up against the biggest challenge in her long political career.