Weeks after being removed from power in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee sat in New Delhi to attend a meeting of the opposition India Caucus. Another meeting some distance away was busy dividing her party further, as the cracks that appeared after her council’s defeat moved north to the national capital.
She arrived for India’s meeting with her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, the national general secretary of the TMC whom the rebels described as the main reason for the party’s loss and division. Neither of them spoke to the media when asked about the renewed push for unity among the India bloc, with which the TMC has had a political stance so far.
The former West Bengal Chief Minister was seen sitting to the right of Congress president and block convener Mallikarjun Kharg. To Kharge’s left was Rahul Gandhi.
This palpable warmth in hot, seething Delhi was seen at a time when Mamata’s alleged role in “destroying” the India bloc, three summers ago, was also making headlines.
Old luggage is making a comeback
Sanjay Jha, national working president of the JD(U) in Bihar, said in an interview that “two people destroyed the India Bloc alliance” in 2023. He named Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal. The AAP chief was not present at the India Caucus meeting anyway, as his party attacked the Congress in the run-up to the meeting where they will soon face off in the Punjab state elections.
Jha claimed that a consensus had been reached that JD(U) supremo and then Bihar CM Nitish Kumar would be the convener of the India bloc when it was clearly formed for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
“But in the meeting, these two people came – perhaps as a planned move – and said that there should be Dalit advocates, suggesting (Mallikarjun) Khargi. This put the Congress in an awkward position (as it cannot oppose its leader). Nitish Gee He was never desperate to be the preacher; It brought everyone together on one platform. But the move was sabotaged,” Jha said. Indian Express Last week.
“Regional parties felt that Congress does politics only in a few states and does not influence them much,” Jha further said. Ultimately, Mamata’s party did not share seats in Bengal, although the AAP and the Congress did so in Delhi.
That was then.
Since then, the Mamata-led TMC’s work with the bloc has been regular: no truck in Bengal, some coordination in Parliament, with occasional friendly fire from both sides.
A tale of two meetings and Mamata’s renewed commitment
In recent days, however, Mamata has reiterated her renewed commitment to opposition unity immediately after her 15-year rule in Bengal ended, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party fulfilling its long-cherished ambition to rule the state of Syama Prasad Mukherjee, the ideologue who founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951, the BJP’s predecessor.
The state units of the Congress and the Left parties reacted with immediate rejection.
But Rahul Gandhi, who attacked the TMC during the election campaign, has not been as aggressive since then, having returned to maintaining some unity at the national level at least.
Mamata’s party appears clearly divided in her country, and the cracks are now evident at the national level as well. One MP resigned from the Rajya Sabha in the morning, and more than a dozen Lok Sabha members met Bengal BJP Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari at the Union Minister’s residence around the same time as the India meeting – not too far away inside New Delhi’s Lutyens area.
The TMC has 28 members in the Lok Sabha at present; The rebels would need a two-thirds bloc of 19 to avoid disqualification under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution. They claim to have this number.
This follows a revolt in the state legislature, where nearly 60 of the 80 TMC members backed ousted rebel Ritabrata Banerjee, who became the leader of the opposition, over the official nominee.
“Nearly 20 TMC MPs, including me, have written to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla about our decision to support the NDA,” senior party MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar claimed in Delhi after his meeting with Suvendu. The Transitional Military Council leadership did not immediately respond to these allegations.
Meanwhile, the Constitution Club’s India Caucus meeting ended with a resolution to meet repeatedly and a set of five resolutions, including raising some urgent issues like the examination-related chaos.
Karg noted that the bloc came into existence approximately three years ago, and urged the partners to move forward “in the spirit of unity.”
Besides Rahul Gandhi, Congress parliamentary party chief Sonia Gandhi, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, Nationalist Congress Party’s (SP) Supriya Sule and Jammu and Kashmir chief Omar Abdullah attended, as did J&K’s Mehbooba Mufti. Uddhav Thackeray from Shiv Sena (UBT) joined virtually.
Mamata returned in person after her defeat in the Assembly upended the 2024 Lok Sabha results, in which the TMC won 29 of the state’s 42 seats and the BJP 12. She cited that result to justify going it alone in the 2026 state polls.
After many ups and downs
This single line defined her early relations with the India bloc as well. In January 2024, she said that the TMC would contest the Lok Sabha elections in her state alone, and declared that “there is no Indian alliance in West Bengal.” She said she remained a part of it on a national level.
By the end of that year, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s NDA party retained power, she offered to lead the India bloc herself. The TMC skipped some of the Congress-led protests in Parliament for a period of time, before coordinating again in the recent Parliament sessions.
After the huge defeat at home, Banerjee appealed to Rabindra Jayanti for a common platform against the new BJP government. State Communist Party of India leaders dismissed her with adjectives like “criminal, racketeer, corrupt, communal”, while Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said she should first accept Rahul Gandhi’s leadership.
The bloc she rejoined is itself nervous after recent defeats for some voters. The DMK in Tamil Nadu boycotted Monday’s meeting over Congress’ support for Vijay’s TVK channel in Tamil Nadu. The CPI(M) fielded only one MP.
