The palpable sense of chastening on the part of West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee after the Congress swept the Karnataka polls is a pointer to the road ahead for the 2024 General Elections. Consider the fact that she was in the forefront of stonewalling all attempts to craft a non-BJP opposition alliance in the 2019 parliamentary polls. She put her foot down by saying she didn’t want the Congress to be a part of it. This was also because she could not stomach Rahul Gandhi as the obvious leader of such a grouping. For her, then, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi were all “juniors” to her in politics. Be that as it may, even as the BJP and Modi made best use of the division in the opposition ranks and rode back to power for a second consecutive term, Banerjee stood her ground in her own state and retained power by taking on Modi and Amit Shah single-handedly. Yet, there was a noticeable taming in the chief minister’s aggressiveness in recent times and it looked as if she was in a mood to mind her own business rather than attempting to teach a lesson or two to Modi. In recent weeks, however, the shuttle diplomacy has been renewed with Banerjee going and meeting Bihar’s greying Nitish Kumar, and Kumar meeting Sonia Gandhi. Hence it’s time for a start of the build-up for the 2024 parliament polls.
Many were in a mood to write off Rahul Gandhi after the establishment went into an overdrive and unseated him from Parliament in the follow-up to a controversial local court order against him in Surat. Significantly, this push began at the height of a successful Bharat Jodo Yatra that Rahul Gandhi conducted, passing through 12 states and covering nearly 4,000 km, and he having received a euphoric welcome in state after state. Set against this, a question was, could any of the regional satraps – pretenders to the PM throne – have hoped to receive a mass support for them beyond their own boundaries. With this yatra, the relevance of the Congress was all too spectacular even to the satraps. Now, reinforcement of this assertion came from the Karnataka poll results. The tussle for the CM’s post there might end soon. If so, and if the tri-colour party wins at least one or two more states in this year’s upcoming assembly polls, that should drill fresh sense into the heads of the regional satraps. Banerjee’s offer to accept the leadership of the Congress for the opposition alliance, albeit with some “conditions,” is a step in the right direction.