Trinamool pins national hope after stellar poll show

Last May, the global media was all out in praise of a woman in her mid 50s wearing plain white saree, wearing Hawai chappals leading a lone battle against the Left in West Bengal. After 10 months, when the nation was seeing the elections in five states as a semi final to 2014 Lok Sabha polls, it was the same Mamata Banerjee who had the last laugh.

Storming into the national scenario, the Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has won seven assembly seats in Manipur, while it also made its mark in states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Goa by fighting the polls alone. According to sources, the electoral debacle for Congress will further strengthen the newly-formed informal regional grouping of parties like the TMC, Janata Dal (United), Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and Telugu Desam Party (TDP). Banerjee has already conveyed her wishes to Samajwadi Party’s Bengal leader Kiranmoy Nanda. Which indicates that SP may well become another player in this group of ministers.

 

A member in the close circles of the TMC supremo said that she had regularly been in talks with leaders like Navin Patanaik, Nitish Kumar and Chadrababu Naidu. “It started during the last session of the parliament and now turned into a regular feature,” informed the source. Moreover, the victory to the Samajwadi Party in the UP means an added dependence on the party by the UPA government.

“For the first time, we have made our mark out side Bengal and became the main opposition party now in Manipur with seven out of 60 seats and we won a considerable share of vote in Uttar Pradesh too. We will never allow FDI in retail or pension reforms to happen and we will also be against the government on issues like price rise,” affirmed Partha Chatterjee, top Trinamool Congress leader and the state commerce and industries minister.

However, the first test for this regional group of parties would be in June, when the next Presidential candidate will be finalised. Sources confirmed that the Trinamool Congress supremo is likely approach SP stalwart Mulayam Singh Yadav to bolster their chance of putting up a common Presidential candidate.

The party also seems to be happy as the SP government will not be de[pendent on the Congress to retain power. “This means SP will have relatively freehand in their relation with Congress in Delhi. The Congress-led UPA government will not be able to snap its relation with TMC,” a party leader said.

However, the party is unlikely to walk out of the UPA for the time being, unless the government comes up with any policy decision unacceptable to it, as Union Budget is also on its way. “We are also on the way to become a national party. That is the reason Mamata Banerjee has put up candidates earlier in Arunachal Pradesh and now in Manipur, Goa and Uttar Pradesh,” said Chatterjee.

After successfully stalling UPA government’s initiatives on FDI in retail, Lokpal Bill and the formation of NCTC Mamata Banerjee got well accepted among the non-Congress and non-BJP political circles. Now Mamata wants to build around that goodwill and trying to form an axis of non-Congress, non-BJP regional players to put pressure on and influence the national politics.

In the early 1980s, the Left Front government led by Jyoti Basu took initiative to bring the opposition together against the Indira Gandhi led Congress government at the centre on the issue of Centre-State relations, which later came to be known as ‘conclave politics’.

Now, after three decades Mamata is trying to walk on the same roads. So, if Akhilesh Yadav is the man of the match of these polls, Banerjee may well turn out to be the man of the series.