West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee visited Meghalaya this week along with her nephew and party’s general secretary Abhishek Banerjee. On the other hand, the TMC appointed former state Congress president Pijush Kanti Biswas as the new state party president of the Tripura party unit this month. Both states are expected to go to polls by February next year.
TMC sees good prospects in Meghalaya
After returning to power in West Bengal for the third time last year, the TMC started to focus once again to make inroads to other states like Tripura, Meghalaya, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Goa — and out of these, currently only Meghalaya seems to be the state where it can win some seats. It is the main Opposition party in the state as a result of the defections of 12 Congress MLAs, led by former Chief Minister Mukul Sangma last year. He is a grassroots leader and has a base in Garo hills. The TMC is banking on Sangma’s popularity there. Garo hills has 24 MLAs in the state assembly. But in the Khasi and Jaintia hills, Sangma’s appeal has limitations. One of the 12 TMC MLAs — Himalaya Muktan Shangpliang — hailing from Khasi hills, has already resigned and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) this month.
Being the party’s supremo, Mamata’s visit is significant as it vividly signals that the party is giving importance to the state. According to reports, she is likely to visit the state in January again. Significantly, this time she didn’t visit Garo hills while visiting Shillong, the state’s capital, which falls under the Khasi hills. She addressed the party workers’ convention where she also tried to emphasise that if the party comes to power, the state would be ruled by leaders of Meghalaya like Sangma and Charles Pyngrope, the state party president.
Whether the party accepts it or not, it’s a bitter fact that it is often seen as a West Bengal-based party which runs from Kolkata. Completely aware of the fact, Mamata tried to send the message to the people of the state that the TMC’s state unit will work according to the state’s interests where her and Abhishek’s role will not be more than the roles of advisors. Not only this, in her speech in Shillong, she tried to portray BJP, which is just one of the five constituents of the National People’s Party (NPP)-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) government, as an outsider run from New Delhi and Assam, referring to Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s clout in the region, being the chairman of the North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), the coalition of non-Congress parties of the region led by the BJP.
TMC’s rejig in Tripura
Since the TMC removed Subal Bhowmik as the state president in August this year, its state unit existed without a president, solely depending on the party’s state in-charge and West Bengal’s former minister Rajib Banerjee and Sushmita Dev, party’s Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) hailing from Assam. This month, the party appointed Pijush, who left Congress last year to form Tripura Democratic Front (TDF). This year, TDF, which in its one-year journey failed to leave any significant mark in the state’s politics, merged with the TMC. Along with that, the party constituted a new state committee comprising 87 members and also announced a 17-member election committee.
Although the TMC got 16.3 percent votes in the last year’s civic polls and came second in the most prestigious Agartala Municipal Corporation along with Ambassa Municipal Council and Teliamura Municipal Council, the party later lost the steam. In the bypolls of the four assembly seats held this year, it got a meagre 2.8 percent votes. One of the main reasons for the party’s failure is that it lacks an organisational base in the state — and building unnecessary hype through pro-party journalists from West Bengal isn’t going to fill that major gap.
Importantly, Pijush and his son Pujan Biswas, currently state TMC general secretary, share a good bond with royal scion Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma, who heads the Tripura Indigenous Peoples Regional Alliance (TIPRA) Motha, a dominant party in the hills. Since last year, Mamata’s party has been trying to woo Pradyot but without any success. By appointing Pijush as the new state president, the TMC is trying to send a message that it is eager to ally with Motha, which too is quite not interested to ally with Mamata’s party. The party knows that in the present situation, it is difficult to even win a seat in the state — and for that to happen, it needs allies. The main Opposition CPI(M), an arch-rival of the TMC in Bengal, doesn’t want to ally with Mamata’s party and the grand old party too isn’t much interested. Both the parties rather doubt the TMC’s opposition against the BJP and see it as a vote-cutter to “help the saffron party.”
The challenge to retain national party status
The TMC got the national party status in 2016 as it fulfilled the criteria of being the state party in four states — West Bengal, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura. Had the Election Commission not amended the rules by allowing all political parties to retain their state or national party status for every 10 years, even then the TMC wouldn’t have got the national status. The next review by the EC on state and national party status is going to happen after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. With the present condition, the TMC is going to lose the national party status as it is going to lose the state party status in Manipur, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh when EC will review it in 2024.
The party, whose supremo aspires to become the prime minister, can’t afford to lose the national party status. It tried in Goa this year by spending resources but still failed to meet any criteria required to get the state party status. The TMC failed to open its account and fetched only 5.2 percent of votes. Currently, only in Meghalaya, it is hoping to secure the state party status — that’s why the party supremo is emphasising this hilly state.
In Tripura, the party knows it is hardly going to be a significant factor in the upcoming polls, until and unless it finds an ally, which has support on the ground. Through the new rejig in the state, the TMC is laying the ground for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections where it is hoping to at least repeat the performance of the 2014 polls when it was able to fetch 9.7 percent votes, fulfilling the EC’s criteria of getting 8 percent valid votes in the state in a Lok Sabha or an Assembly election to get the state party status.
The writer is a political commentator. He tweets @SagarneelSinha. Views expressed are personal.
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