In the last few months, Mamata Banerjee-led TMC has suffered a massive exodus of good leaders. Mukul Roy, who was number two in the party, was the first to leave in 2017. After that, the party held itself together for the next few years, but as the 2021 Bengal Assembly Election nears, it seems the party will be left only with goons and Islamic fundamentalists.
Almost all senior ministers of the party including very influential ones like Suvendu Adhikari, Rajib Banerjee, and Laxmi Ratan Shukla, who can swing the results on many seats, have left the party. Apart from that, influential MLAs like Vaishali Dalmiya – daughter of industrialist Dalmiya – have also left the party to join BJP.
So, currently, TMC has neither the support of industrialists nor of the popular leaders. The popular faces as well as the leaders who could bring ‘clean money’ to fight elections have left the party to join BJP. The latest blow party suffered is of Dinesh Trivedi, the senior leader who is considered an institution of Indian politics, has also resigned and was welcomed by the saffron party.
In interviews with some media outlets, the TMC stalwart took to revealing that the TMC’s soul was no longer in the cadre or the fundamental ethos with which the party was founded, but had instead shifted in the hands of some “corporate consultants”, in an apparent jibe at I-PAC chief Prashant Kishor.
Since Mukul Roy left, Dinesh Trivedi was the brains and the organisational man of TMC, and his resignation means the party is now entirely dependent on corporate consultants, not the grassroots leaders who have experience in political organisation.
The situation of TMC ahead of the West Bengal Assembly Election, 2021 is dire and many leaders are not even agreeing to contest on the party ticket.
TMC MLA from Bardhaman Dakhin Rabiranjan Chattopadhyay, who is a former minister for the Department of Technical Education & Training and Science & Technology and Biotechnology, too, has refused to contest the election, citing health issues.
The 2021 West Bengal Elections seem to be a repetition of the Assam Assembly Elections of 2016 – in which the most popular senior leaders of the Congress, including the master politician Himanta Biswa Sharma, left the party to join BJP.
Congress lost badly in Assam in the 2016 Assembly Elections and TMC is about to meet the same fate. The party is now fully dependent on Muslim community votes and even that is now under attack from AIMIM, led by Owaisi. Like AIUDF cut the Muslim votes in Assam and helped BJP to win many seats, AIMIM would cut the Muslim votes in Bengal and help BJP gain the two-third of the majority.
Since the early 2010s, BJP has been tirelessly working, especially in the OBC and ST dominated areas of West Bengal. Dilip Ghosh, who comes from Sadgop caste of the Jungle Mahal region-one of the backward regions of West Bengal, was appointed as the President of West Bengal BJP in 2015.
So, not a single person from the Hindu community, irrespective of their caste, seems to be going in favour of the TMC. Most of the senior leaders have left the party, industrialists have pulled out the backing, and intellectuals and organisers like Dinesh Trivedi are also leaving the party. TMC has thus, turned into a party of goons and fundamentalists and is set to lose badly in the 2021 Assembly Elections.
