Graft charges, right-ward shift, political stand: How is Mamata Banerjee losing momentum in opposition politics

Kolkata: The ruling Trinamool Congress of West Bengal, under the leadership of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, is under a storm of corruption charges. The party is desperately working on a course correction as the current charges and arrests of key leaders have hurt the politics of Banerjee. Her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, is leading the show in Bengal in a bid to rectify the wrongdoings of the party. But this entire situation has harmed the national ambition of Mamata Banerjee. However, it is not the only issue that has affected the image of Mamata Banerjee as the unifier of the opposition parties.

While lack of coordination between the opposition political parties remains a distinctive characteristic, the dynamics of the individual non-BJP parties are changing frequently in India. For example, recently, Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of Bihar, left the hand of the Bharatiya Janata Party and allied with the Rashtriya Janta Dal-led mahagathbandhan. This week, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar came to Delhi and met several key leaders of the opposition factions. She met Aam Aadmi Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, CPIM general secretary Sitaram Yechury, CPI general secretary D Raja, and political veteran Sharad Yadav, among others. Recently, he also met Telangana CM K Chandrashekhar Rao. But a significant exception in this list is definitely the TMC.

Ambiguous political stand

Mamata Banerjee is known for her ability to walk the walk, but as an opposition partner, she has been either overly enthusiastic or underwhelming. For example, during the presidential election, while the talks between the opposition political parties, including the Congress party, were going on, suddenly Banerjee called a meeting of the non-BJP political parties in Delhi. During that meeting, she suggested the name of NCP leader Sharad Pawar, but he did not accept the offer. Later, the TMC itself recommended Yashwant Sinha as the presidential candidate, but in the run-up to the election, Banerjee did not back him. He was asked by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) not to campaign in Bengal because their votes were already guaranteed. Mamata Banerjee even made statements indicating that she would have preferred Draupadi Murmu as a consensus candidate if it had been discussed with her earlier.

In contrast, when during the vice presidential election, all the opposition parties came together and announced the name of Margaret Alva, in an unprecedented move, Mamata Banerjee announced that her party would abstain from the election. Despite the fact that the vice presidential candidate of the NDA was then-governor of Bengal, Jagdeep Dhankar. In recent Indian politics, the conflicts between Dhankar and Banerjee are all well known.

The TMC has been trying to maintain a distance from the Congress party after Mamata Banerjee won the 2021 Bengal assembly elections. While the message of the TMC to the Congress party is that Mamata Banerjee does not want to be taken for granted, the majority of the opposition parties, except the Aam Aadmi Party, understand that an opposition alliance except the Congress will not be possible in India. This is why an ambiguous stance in opposition politics will only harm the image of the TMC. For example, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is clear in its stand. In Kerala, they fought against the Congress party, but in the central government and in other states, the Congress and the Left are together.

Graft charges

Corruption allegations against the opposition parties by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the central agencies are not new. However, right now, Mamata Banerjee's TMC is cornered with several corruption charges. Partha Chatterjee, suspended secretary general of the party and Cabinet minister, is in ED custody for the alleged SSC recruitment scam. Similarly, TMC strongman Anubrata Mondal, who is the Birbhum district president of the party, is under CBI custody for the alleged cow smuggling scam. Abhishek Banerjee, the nephew of TMC supremo, Ruchira Banerjee, the wife of Abhishek, and her sister are also under the CBI scanner. The Calcutta High Court has ordered over eight CBI probes into different cases in the past few years. A section of political analysts believes that opposition politicians like Arvind Kejriwal, Nitish Kumar, or even Sharad Pawar are currently not actively supporting TMC or Mamata Banerjee because of these graft charges against the party.

A senior TMC MP, on the condition of anonymity, said, " The opposition parties are scared to take a stand against fellow politicians. However, many leaders have reached out to the TMC supremo and expressed their support. Every political party is scared that if they openly support it, then the agencies will raid them. Look at Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut. When he was arrested, many of the alliance partners in Maharashtra did not even criticise his arrest."

Appeasement politics and makeover

Mamata Banerjee considers her pro-minority reputation to be a major obstacle in her quest for expansion and national ambition. From the 2021 Bengal assembly elections, Banerjee is aggressively changing her stances and recently, it has become definitive that the TMC will not take on Hindutva anymore. Mamata Banerjee is not the only leader who wants to fight the BJP in this particular way because the AAP led by Arvind Kejriwal does exactly the same. However, for an unpredictable and unstoppable leader like Mamata Banerjee, this change in stand is indeed significant. This poses some fundamental issues concerning the rightward shift in Indian politics.

Mamata Banerjee was one of the most vocal critics of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act and National Registrar Of Citizenship. The BJP brought the CAA focusing on the Bengal assembly election and recently in his visit Home Minister Amit Shah also promised that the law will be implemented soon. During the 2021 Bengal assembly election and before that Banerjee had attacked the BJP on this issue but now the party has become silent. Similarly, Banerjee has maintained silence over the allegedly growing atrocities against Muslims.

Significantly, recently, Mamata Banerjee even praised the RSS, which is the parent organisation of the BJP. The Congress party, and most importantly, Rahul Gandhi, are very critical of the RSS. Except for the Aam Aadmi Party, the majority of the opposition political parties are secular. The rightward shift of Mamata Banerjee is not going well with these political parties.

A Congress functionary from Delhi who did not want to be named said, "Didi (Mamata Banerjee) is unpredictable. The RSS and the BJP are one and the same, and they are our key political rivals. We cannot imagine a united front in which leaders praise the RSS while opposing the BJP. It is a double standard."

Stuck to Bengal

Despite many efforts, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress is unable to go beyond Bengal politics. The party tried hard in the Goa assembly elections and also in Tripura, but in both these states, the TMC failed miserably. In Meghalaya, where the TMC is in opposition, there are rumours that many party MLAs are ready to quit before the elections. In the past year, the TMC did not work on strengthening the roots in these states. On the one hand, there is an example of Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party, which is significantly expanding from state to state, and on the other hand, there is the TMC, which is stuck in Bengal. This failure of expansion has also affected national ambition of Banerjee.