Trinamool Congress wins bye-election to Manipur Assembly

Being a coalition partner of the Congress at the Centre need not be a deterrent for Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress to join hands with the BJP elsewhere.

Konthoujam Sarat of the Trinamool Congress on Thursday won the Konthoujam bye-election to the Manipur legislative assembly — first election victory of the Trinamool Congress in the state. Last year, it had won five assembly seats in Arunachal Pradesh. In both elections, Trinamool candidates were directly contesting Congress nominees.

Although Banerjee is obsessed with the upcoming Bengal elections where she expects an “Egypt-like revolution”, she thanked the people of Manipur for her party’s victory. Banerjee thinks her pet slogan maa-mati-manush (mother, land and human beings) for Bengal has also done wonders in faraway Manipur.

“I want to thank the people of Manipur. Our candidate won because of the blessings of ma, maati and manush. We had also won in Arunachal Pradesh and these seats are adding to our strength,” Banerjee said here before leaving for Kolkata.

While she bypassed the question of how a UPA partner joined hands with the BJP, the Congress also did not read much into it. “This local adjustments have happened earlier as well. In Goa, we have fought against the combination of our alliance partner combining with the BJP,” said Congress spokesperson Janardan Dwivedi. The Trinamool candidate in Manipur defeated Congress’ S Ranjan by 651 votes. The BJP did not contest in this seat and helped the Trinamool nominee.

This can act as a pointer to another NDA partner, Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) which was trying for a seat adjustment with the Trinamool for the forthcoming elections in Bengal.