WHIFF OF A THIRD FRONT

WITH THE CONGRESS AND LEFT PARTIES HINTING AT JOINING FORCES, AND A RISING BJP ALREADY SNAPPING AT HER HEELS, MAMATA BANERJEE’S WORRIES MAY HAVE JUST INCREASED

- Romita Datta

When Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury took over as president of his party in West Bengal in early September, he declared that the “autocratic” Trinamool Congress (TMC) government will be given a “zabardast (tough) fight” in the assembly election due early 2021. Similar voices echoed from the Left Front, their legislative assembly leader Sujan Chakraborty saying defeating the TMC was the “first step to taking on the BJP eventually”. As an embattled Mamata Banerjee fine-tunes her game plan against main opponent BJP, the emergence of the Congress-Left as a prospective third—in their words ‘secular alternative’—front is adding to her worry lines. All the more because Chowdhury—a known Mamata-baiter since her days in the Congress—is the face of this combine.

The Congress and the Left had fought the 2016 assembly election, too, as allies, but finished a distant runner-up. Together, they won 76 of the 294 seats and 38 per cent of the votes, against the TMC’s 211 seats and a 44.9 per cent vote share. The BJP, which won only three seats and 10.16 per cent votes, did more damage to the Congress-Left than the TMC by splitting the anti-incumbency vote. “We deliberately made a token presence in that election to shrink the space for other opponents in the future,” says an RSS leader from Bengal. “But a lot of strategising has happened since then, and the two main players (TMC and BJP) will not mind fighting the upcoming election along religious lines.”