Mahua Moitra’s expulsion buries some key rivalries in Bengal, at least temporarily

Mahua Moitra, by the look of things, will laugh all the way to the Lok Sabha next year.

Even as Mahua Moitra lobbies the Supreme Court for speedy justice without much success so far, her unilateral expulsion from the Lok Sabha by the Bharatiya Janata Party is impacting inter-party equations not only in West Bengal but at the INDIA bloc level in the run up to the parliamentary polls in the first half of 2024.

Firstly, l’affaire Mahua Moitra has suddenly and unexpectedly harmonised the strained relations between the Congress Party and the Trinamool Congress, the largest and the second-largest opposition parties with 81 and 35 MPs in the two Houses, respectively.

After the Congress Party’s rout in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, West Bengal CM and Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee did not stop at sprinkling salt on the vanquished party’s wounds. She didn’t spare even Rahul Gandhi – she flatly refused to attend a conclave of the INDIA bloc in New Delhi despite Rahul’s telephonic request – and the conclave eventually fell through.

Congress Backing

But within days of the well-publicised snub, both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul solemnly stood behind Trinamool Congress’ Mahua Moitra, along with other opposition stalwarts like Farooq Abdullah, as she demonstrated on the stairs of Parliament after she was thrown out without being given an opportunity to defend herself inside the House.

This writer has learnt that Sudip Bandopadhyay, leader of the Trinamool Congress in the Lok Sabha, wanted Mahua to hold her protest near the statue of Mahatma Gandhi, but Rahul advised her to demonstrate and address the media on the stairs of Parliament itself – and Mahua did exactly that with Sudip’s concurrence. The presence of both Gandhis throughout the high decibel protest shows that Mahua has become a bridge between the two parties who were at loggerheads before her expulsion but have now closed ranks to express solidarity with her.

Even more remarkable is the all-out support extended to Mahua by Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, leader of the Congress Party in the Lok Sabha and West Bengal Congress president, who is engaged in a running battle with Mamata and is considered to be the biggest obstacle in the path of Congress-Trinamool unity, which is critical for the success of the INDIA bloc strategy in the Trinamool Congress-ruled state.

Chowdhury’s sustained and no-holds-barred advocacy for Mahua, inside and outside Parliament, has left all seasoned political observers perplexed – and it doesn’t bode well for the BJP, which has set a target of winning 35 seats out of 42 in West Bengal.

The CPM Surprise

Secondly, there is no love lost between Mahua’s Trinamool Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) led by the combative Mohammad Salim in West Bengal. Although the CPI(M), which ruled Bengal for 34 years, is now a shadow of its former self, it is still battling the Trinamool Congress in league with the Congress Party. But Salim and his party, who don’t miss an opportunity to attack Mamata and the Trinamool Congress on any pretext under the sun, are swooning over Mahua. Even veteran communist Brinda Karat has put aside her ideological differences with the Trinamool Congress to back Mahua publicly and unconditionally, which was simply unimaginable before her expulsion and still feels surreal to be honest.

Until the Mahua episode, the three non-BJP parties in West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress, the CPI(M) and Congress Party were going at each other’s throats ruling out any chances of seat-sharing for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections under the INDIA umbrella. In that sense, INDIA was a non-starter in West Bengal.

Mamata often called the Congress Party-CPI(M) alliance a proxy for the BJP to cut the Trinamool Congress’ votes. Similarly, Congress Party-CPI(M) branded the Trinamool Congress as the B team of the BJP. Now, out of the blue, the mutual recrimination has been replaced by bonhomie and camaraderie. Whether it lasts or not, INDIA has certainly acquired a bit more credibility and a leg-up in West Bengal with all three parties rallying behind Mahua, burying their seemingly irreconcilable differences.

Political Capital For TMC & Mahua

Some people laugh all the way to the bank. Mahua, by the look of things, will laugh all the way to the Lok Sabha next year. Both Mamata and Abhishek Banerjee, the second-most powerful Trinamool Congress leader, have thrown their full weight behind Mahua, making her battle their battle. And the duo’s backing has produced a cascading effect. Every Trinamool Congress MLA in Mahua’s Krishnagar Lok Sabha seat, which she won by 63,000 votes in 2019, has publicly taken an oath to ensure that she romps home by a record margin this time. Six out of seven assembly segments of Mahua’s parliamentary constituency are represented by her party.

Come elections, Mahua is going to take a leaf out of Mamata’s book. In the 2021 Bengal assembly polls, Mamata projected herself as Banglar Meye, or Bengal’s daughter, who was being attacked by a battery of BJP heavyweights like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath who had descended on the state, and pleaded with voters to protect her from Bahiragata, or the outsiders.

In Mahua’s case, she is already perceived as Banglar Meye who was waylaid in Delhi, and all that she has to do is to tell her constituency to give a befitting reply. Mahua’s victimisation, in fact, will yield dividends across the state, making her a trump card for the Trinamool Congress.

SNM Abdi is an independent journalist specialising in India’s foreign policy and domestic politics. Views are personal, and do not represent the stance of this publication.