A mahajot sans the BJP?

BY MOVING OUT of the BJP-led NDA combine, the Trinamool Congress leader, Ms. Mamata Banerjee, has set the stage for a significant realignment of forces in West Bengal. With hardly a month left for the poll process to begin in the State, the ruling Left Front has a lot to be concerned about. The stink raised by the tehelka.com ``exposures'' was only an opportunity that Ms. Banerjee seized to walk out of the BJP fold. She could not have ignored the ground reality in West Bengal where an alliance with the BJP was only a liability, not an advantage to the Trinamool Congress in the coming elections to the State Assembly. The BJP can neither boast of an organisation in West Bengal nor any significant following. Thus, remaining in the NDA was hardly going to help Ms. Banerjee with any additional votes in the Assembly elections. And more important was the fact that the Trinamool Congress would have had to do without the support of a substantive chunk of the anti-Left voters who were at the same time averse to being seen aiding the BJP-led NDA. Ms. Banerjee, after all, could not have glossed over the fact that West Bengal is among the States with a substantive Muslim population.

It may be true that Ms. Banerjee got a foothold in West Bengal within months of floating the Trinamool Congress. She joined the BJP-led combine in the 1998 general elections and managed to retain her strength in September 1999 too. But the context then was different in that the polls were for the Lok Sabha. Even then, Ms. Banerjee could wrest only those constituencies that were traditional strongholds of the Congress(I). It was clear even at that stage that the Assembly elections would be a different ball game. And this was borne out in the elections to the corporations and other local bodies held in the State between November 1999 and now. Apart from showing that the hold of the Left parties was not eroded in any substantive sense, the polls established that the Congress(I) was still a force. Although Ms. Banerjee had emerged, during the past couple of years, as the rallying point for all those opposed to the Left Front in West Bengal, the voting figures since May 1998 established that the Trinamool Congress would need the Congress(I) on its side to take on the ruling combine in the State. And it was in this context that the leaders of both these parties - Ms. Banerjee as well as those in the West Bengal PCC(I) - began campaigning for a `mahajot'. The only hurdle all these days to the shaping up of this grand alliance was Ms. Banerjee's inability to walk out of the BJP-led Government at the Centre.

This, indeed, is the significance of Ms. Banerjee's decision to quit the Union Cabinet (along with Mr. Ajit Panja) and announce withdrawal of her party's support to the NDA in Parliament. It will now be only a matter of time before she begins working towards a tie-up with the Congress(I) and cobble together a `mahajot' sans the BJP. Such a tie-up, at this stage, may face some problems; after all, the Trinamool leader has announced her candidates in most constituencies. In addition to this, the Congress(I) in West Bengal has committed itself to an arrangement with the platform constituted by ex-members of the CPI(M). But then, a `mahajot' that will include all these forces - the Trinamool Congress, the Congress(I) and the ex-communists - could certainly place the Left Front in a difficult position in the Assembly elections. Meanwhile, the Congress(I) will also have to choose between its survival in West Bengal (in the immediate context of the elections there) and the imperatives at the national level where it cannot afford to keep the Left parties out in the efforts to take on the BJP-led NDA. It remains to be seen as to how Ms. Sonia Gandhi manages to resolve this problem.

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