It seems like West Bengal is on the verge of becoming Congress-Mukt. According to media reports, severe infighting is going in Congress’ camp. As the preparations for the meeting between Rahul Gandhi and legislators are going on, there are talks that at least a dozen more MLAs and MPs might quit the Congress party. These rebels are expected to join TMC. Since the 2016 West Bengal elections, 12 of the 44 Congress’ MLAs have already joined Trinamool Congress.
West Bengal state unit of the Congress has been at loggerheads with the high command since 2016 when it forced them to join hands with the left. Recently, West Bengal Congress unit chief, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary, has taken an anti-Mamata stance openly, while high command leaders in Delhi are trying to pacify her and bring her to their fold. West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee and Telangana CM KCR already pitched for a strong federal front comprising of regional parties only, which would be both anti-BJP and anti-Congress. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary said, “If you see the statistics, when we had an alliance with the TMC, the party had to make heavy sacrifices. And in return, the TMC tried to weaken our party organization, be it by poaching our elected representatives or by letting loose a reign of terror on us.”
This is nothing new. The Congress party did the same thing in Karnataka as well. In Karnataka, it had gone against the wishes of its state unit and formed a post-poll alliance with the JD(S) to grab power. Main reasons behind this are: the weakening of the local units of the Congress, a disinterested central leadership looking for shortcuts to grab the power making the matter worse and an electorate looking for alternatives has contributed to the slow disintegration of the grand old party.
In West Bengal, Congress party is trying to employ Karnataka type model. In order to save its existence, grab power and stop BJP from coming to power, it wants to ally with the TMC. Alliance with the left in the 2016 Bengal Assembly elections was a complete failure and the leader who played a pivotal role in stitching together the Congress-Left alliance, Omprakash Mishra, was not invited for the meeting.
It looks like the Congress is ready to desert the Left for the TMC. Congress party is facing an existential crisis in Bengal and the TMC may completely destroy the Congress strongholds districts Murshidabad and Malda by wooing local leaders away from those districts. A former state Congress party president said, “A reason why the party may move closer to the TMC at the cost of the Left is to protect its base in these districts.”
Murshidabad had been Pranab Mukherjee’s constituency for decades.
We are likely to see this pattern throughout the country. As the current trends are going, it would be no exaggeration to say that in order to stop the BJP from coming back to power, the Congress party might compromise with its ideology and may swallow its pride again just like it did in Karnataka.