Curiously, INDIA bloc held its meeting in the national capital on Monday at the behest of West Bengal’s former chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Banerjee had been undercutting the cause of opposition unity and charting an independent course. She often trashed the Congress that led the bloc and targeted its leader Rahul Gandhi. But, on Monday, she was among the first to reach the Constitution Club and sit through the discussions. A chastened Banerjee stressed the need for opposition unity – at a time when sand is slipping from under her feet, when her Trinamool Congress is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions and of her own dynastic pushes, and when her set of parliamentarians are negotiating with the BJP to join the saffron front. Even as the opposition bloc needs her, she for a change needs them more to remain afloat. Defeated in her own constituency, and the TMC seeing a vertical split after the elections, Banerjee is a shadow of her former self.
Yet, what’s evident in her eagerness to urgently seek a meeting of the India bloc to discuss the post-poll situation was obviously guided by two factors, namely her desire to keep proving her relevance by appearing on a national stage and a keenness to avoid a situation of the rebel TMC joining the India bloc, which she could now resist from within. The Congress played into her hands by immediately calling the bloc’s meeting at her behest. The hug between Sonia Gandhi and Banerjee demonstrated the warmth the Congress still retained for the TMC leader, who had ditched the Congress to form her own party and win power in Bengal by also decimating the parent party there. Politics is the art of the possible, it is said. Yet, with the TMC showing every sign of a total disintegration, alternative regional forces are bound to gain steam in the state. These should as well be a part of the INDIA bloc, to which Banerjee and her party had never been an integral part.
The pointed reference that Rahul Gandhi made at the Delhi meeting to the constant criticism of the Congress by Banerjee and the Left was both understandable and justified. Perceptibly, out of a desire to “promote” herself to the PM post should a chance arise in future, Banerjee had refused to acknowledge the importance of the Congress and its leader Rahul Gandhi, who’s now the opposition leader in Parliament. He has grown with the times. The Congress party has revived itself, doubled its strength in Parliament from 50-plus to nearly a hundred, and runs governments in as many as four states now. Yet, Banerjee seeking to outwit it until the other day presented a curious sight. The division in the opposition ranks – reflected also in the fact that the India bloc could not hold a single meeting after the 2024 general elections – was advantageous to the BJP. All the same, it’s significant that the opposition meeting in Delhi took some unanimous decisions. As Rahul Gandhi noted, “Divided we stand, united we fall.”
