Mamata’s Delhi visit!

Didi’s Delhi trip!

 

West Bengal CM, Mamata Banerjee, has been camping at Delhi to prove her mettle as a National leader and the only alternative to Narendra Modi led BJP in the centre in the 2024 polls. She will not return empty-handed, much like her business promotion visits in India or abroad, but big-ticket influxes have been missing so far.

 

Far away from Delhi, the defection of 11 MLAs led by their former CM Mukul Sangma from Meghalaya from Congress to TMC seems more important now that this faction has become the main opposition party.  Most who have joined the TMC are former or dissident Congressmen, like the former MP Ashok Tanwar from Haryana.  Kirti Azad, a former suspended BJP MP who shifted his allegiance to Congress from Bihar, and the former JD(U) MP, Pavan Varma from Bihar, joined Trinamool.

 

If we draw a balance sheet, will it be beneficial to Didi for 2024 is a difficult question to answer. If the plan is to expand Trinamool’s footprints nationally, it would be at the cost of support from various other parties, the Indian National Congress in particular. There have been statements from the Congress spokespersons of Mamata’s poaching from their flock. The fact that the Gandhis cold-shouldered her request for a meeting during this visit exemplifies the fact. One cannot have the cake and eat it too.

 

Indian National Congress is still a force to reckon with nationally. It has greater financial and organizational resources than a regional party like the Trinamool. To gain a few former MPs and pensioners from other parties in place of losing out the support of the Congress party is a risky move that would not benefit the Trinamool party or Didi’s 2024 PM aspirations.

 

After registering a landslide victory in the 2021 Assembly polls, the Trinamool strategist must not rush to conclude that such a change could also occur nationally. Politics being a game of money will drain the financial resources, now under increased watchful eyes of the law enforcing departments.

 

Didi’s next visit is o Mumbai to meet the political veteran Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray, the Maharashtra CM. It will also be to meet business leaders inviting them to the Bengal Business Summit 2022. I wish her all success. It is time that someone from her party or her much dear Nobel-laureate advisors must dare to rise and advise her against her party’s rigid anti-land acquisition policy impeding the State’s industrial sector. An investment of barely a thousand crores makes headlines with her party and a section of the media euphoric in Bengal.

 

Mamata met the PM during the visit. Didi surprisingly invited Narendra Modi to the Bengal Business Summit, among other relevant topics like the BSF matter and finances, suddenly realizing the cooperation part in the cooperative-federalism she espouses often.  Such abrupt changes are not without reason. As a host at the summit, the PM cannot criticize Didi, like in the poll meetings. The presence of the PM could ensure the presence of top business honchos.

 

Despite whatever Didi is emerging as a face to reckon with, her party’s presence is seen in different parts of the country, from Goa to Meghalaya, from Haryana to Bihar.

 

Oh! Did I miss Subramaniam Swamy, the other pensioner from the BJP and the one who swore to file a suit against Mamata? He’s a changed man now.

 

Sampath Kumar

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