The quote – ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures’ is best-epitomised by the Trinamool Congress as in Mamata’s battle to retain her Chief Minister’s chair is increasingly getting desperate. In a bid to stop the BJP’s juggernaut in West Bengal, TMC MP Saugata Roy has urged the Congress-Left alliance to join hands with Mamata to stop the saffron party’s march. This is the clearest admission yet from the TMC that the party alone stands no chance to defeat BJP in the state.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen! From breaking away from the Congress and forming the TMC and vowing to end the decades’ old Left rule in Bengal, TMC and Mamata are now prostrating before the Left and INC to ally in a desperate bid to ensure the BJP’s defeat in West Bengal.
“If the Left Front and the Congress are genuine anti-BJP forces, they should line up behind Trinamool Congress, because Mamata Banerjee’s party is the only party fighting against the communal and divisive politics of the saffron party. Mamata Banerjee is the real face of secularism,” said TMC MP Saugata Roy.
Roy’s statement indicates that the TMC has accepted that on its own, it stands no chance to stop the saffron juggernaut in the state. TMC has indeed hit rock bottom as it is now pleading with its two fiercest and ideologically opposite rivals to forge an alliance.
Things have got a bit more desperate for the TMC after Owaisi’s AIMIM not only decided to enter the electoral fray in Bengal but is also on the verge of forging an alliance with Furfura Sharif cleric Abbas Siddiqui. The latter is believed to hold sway in at least 90 seats spread across the districts of Malda, Murshidabad, south 24 Paraganas, Howrah and Hoogly and is planning to contest on all the 294 Assembly seats on offer in an alliance with the AIMIM.
The 30% minority vote in West Bengal always had a major say in electing the state’s Chief Minister with Mamata’s two terms too heavily relied on wooing the minority electorate. However, this time around, not only is Mamata battling tremendous anti-incumbency due to her absolute bungling in the handling of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic and the utter lawlessness, the Owaisi-Siddiqui factor threatens to upset her applecart by snatching away the minority voter base of TMC.
Hence, Roy has suggested an umbrella alliance of TMC-Left-INC to prevent the slipping away of minority votes and defeat the BJP in West Bengal. However, as things stand, even the three-party alliance would not be able to stop a rampant BJP which is moving forward menacingly to unshackle Bengal from the stranglehold of the TMC.