Kolkata, Jan 3: With the West Bengal Assembly elections a few months away, TMC MP Mausam Benazir Noor’s return to the Congress has reopened Malda’s political arithmetic, turning a politically settled district into a live variable that revives triangular-contest risks, unsettles minority equations, and tests whether the TMC’s 2021 consolidation can withstand churn.
Seven years after crossing over from the Congress to the TMC, the Rajya Sabha MP’s rejoining the grand old party in New Delhi on Saturday has come at a politically loaded moment.
Noor’s political homecoming has exposed a structural contradiction shaping Bengal politics ahead of 2026, underscoring a reality the INDIA bloc cannot ignore: unity in Delhi, fragmentation in the state, where the TMC is fighting simultaneous battles against the BJP and the Left-Congress alliance.
The Congress is searching for revival in districts where it was once dominant, the TMC is guarding a hard-won consolidation among minorities, and the BJP continues to eye vote-splits that helped it crack the Malda North seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
For the Mamata Banerjee- led Trinamool Congress, it is the timing, and not the departure, that causes discomfort. (PTI)
