Delhi 2024!

The recently concluded West Bengal State Assembly elections have boosted Mamata Banerjee’s political fortunes. She has not only burst the dreams of the BJP of winning ‘at least’ 200 seats but has further consolidated her position. A reverse flow has begun, defectors from her AITC returning from the BJP, some head shaved, and some sanitized as an atonement of their sins of joining the BJP party.

Something else is churning in Bengal, a concerted attempt by her party and sympathizers to project Didi as the sure-shot PM for 2024. As usual, a Bengali pride meshes with the promotion, anyone doubting it consigned to the coals. Why not Mamata as a PM? She can, and she must. In anticipation, I-Pac has been retained until 2026, not only to elevate Mamata Banerjee as the PM but ensuring TMC’s continued stranglehold on the governance of West Bengal in the 2026 elections.

Close political observers can see a rebranding exercise on a mellower, Didi, Abhishek Banerjee, closer to Didi as her deputy than ever.  The trademark kurta-pyjama replaced with shirt pants as resonating common people. Didi also started giving bytes on burning national issues, like the restoration of Art.370, even as the PM-Kashmir meeting was on in Delhi yesterday.

The All-India Trinamool Congress is an ‘All India’ party only in namesake, its national status almost revoked in 2019, benevolently retained by the then election commission. Mamata has begun her national conquest by re-inducting Mukul Roy and making him in charge of Tripura, the closest counterpart of Bengal in culture, habits, and language. However, these are cosmetic and more daring political manoeuvres needed to project Mamata as a truly PM material.

Five states would be having their Assembly elections in early 2022, Goa, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and Uttarakhand. These work out to a total of 690 seats up for grabs. The Himachal and Gujarat elections are due between October 22 and December 22, respectively, with an additional 68 and 182 seats. AITC must contest at least 10 per cent of these seats to check the mood of the people from other parts of India. Even if she does not win, the extent of votes polled will give an idea of the possibility of AITC’s role as a national party and Mamata as a national leader.

Any reasonable win will catapult Mamata’s elevation as the primary face of an opposition coalition. If her party loses badly, she will have to focus on Bengal and finish the unfinished agenda of investments, industrialization, and development. Prominent and well-connected leaders like Yashwant Sinha could become TMC’s State poll coordinators, willing to ride high on winning the polls and ready to take the onus on defeat and do the needful.

A Bengali as the PM of India could indeed be the dream of not only the Nobel laureates and the Oxford-Cambridge-Stanford clan but crores of ordinary Bengalis as well.

Sampath Kumar

Intrépide Voix