It is not often that a party can take heart from a defeat. But the defeat of Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is one such instance for the Congress.
Chowdhury was the Congress flagbearer in Bengal, and its leader in the Lok Sabha, after winning five consecutive terms from Baharampur. But he was also the biggest stumbling block in the party's efforts to bring in the Trinamool Congress as a leading constituent of the INDIA bloc.
Chowdhury built his political career as a Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal Chief Minister) baiter, first trying to fill the opposition space against the Left Front before positioning himself against the TMC when it wrested power in 2011 from the Left.
The Bengal Congressman was instrumental in undermining the Congress-TMC talks on seat-sharing. True, Mamata Banerjee was offering no more than two seats, which the Congress had already won. But the seat negotiations did not really take off because Chowdhury was adamant that contesting more seats in the company of the Left Front was more beneficial than taking three or four seats as a TMC ally.
With his defeat, the Congress finds its hands free to be able to negotiate with the TMC and inviting it to play a bigger role as part of the INDIA bloc at the national level. Actually none from the national leadership of the Congress campaigned for Chowdhury, who was left to fend for himself in Baharampur.
One of the biggest successes of the Congress in 2024 was an ability to accept a reduced role in alliances in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. The Tamil Nadu model of playing the role of a junior partner helped the party in stitching up alliances.
But Chowdhury seemed too focused on Baharampur, which he was confident of winning on his own, than on Bengal, let alone the rest of India. In his calculation, he had more to lose than gain in Baharampur by allying with the TMC, which he saw as a bitter foe.
The Congress would like to mend fences with its breakaway parties, not only the TMC in Bengal, but also the YSRCP in Andhra Pradesh. This would mean keeping in check the ambitions of its regional chieftains such as Chowdhury.
Also, in Bengal, the Congress is no longer sure of the continuance of the alliance with the Left. Actually, the Left is under pressure from its Kerala units to break off ties with the Congress as it finds it incongruent to fight the Congress in Kerala and partner it in Bengal. The situation is different in Tamil Nadu where it is part of the same alliance, but the alliance leader is a third party, the DMK. The Left takes the line that its alliance is only with the DMK.
Besides, in Bengal, the CPI(M), the major constituent of the Left Front, is also under pressure from other constituents such as the Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party to break ties with the Congress. These parties feel the Congress is a liability rather than an asset in an election.
The support of the Left can be taken for granted by the Congress in any anti-BJP formation. Although the TMC has large sections of Muslims among its support base, there is no certainty about who it would go with. The Congress would like it to be firmly with the INDIA bloc. With Chowdhury out of the way, this task might just have gotten easier.
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