Now he is eager to take shelter of the same Congress with which Mamata Banerjee had broken ties in 1998. After last 29 years of separation, now Mamata is again looking for a way for her safe return to Congress. The way Mamata and Sonia met before the India Block meeting on June 8, there is a strong possibility that Mamata Banerjee’s remaining Trinamool may put aside all its grudges and join Congress! In 1997, Mamata Banerjee boycotted Congress and formed her new party Trinamool Congress on January 1, 1998. This was the same Mamata who considered Rajiv Gandhi as her ideal and during his time, she reached the Lok Sabha in 1984 by defeating CPI(M) veteran Somnath Chatterjee from Jadavpur Lok Sabha seat. She was also a minister in the Narasimha Rao government. But when Sonia took charge of the Congress, she broke relations with the Congress.
Congress with real roots
When Trinamool Congress was formed, Mamata had said, we are the real Congress because we have started trying to connect Congress with the grassroots. Trinamool means grass root. That means we are the Congress with its roots. Mamta lived up to her claim. He broke the frustrated and dejected Congress in West Bengal. His associates in this were Congress leaders like Mukul Roy and Subhendu Adhikari. Since it was out of power in West Bengal since 1977, it had no hope of regaining power in this eastern state. Pranab Mukherjee continued to enjoy power at the Center and the state unit was limited to a few councilors or a few MLAs. There was mutual rivalry among the state level leaders. There was no getting along between Priyaranjan Das Munshi, Somendra Nath Mitra and Abdul Ghani Khan Chaudhary. When Mamata left Congress, Somendra Babu was the state Congress president. After this Ghani Khan Chaudhary happened.
TMC also inclined towards BJP
Interestingly, when Mamata Banerjee was entering Congress in the 1980s, she was associated with the Somendra Mitra faction and when she left the party, Somendra Da was the state Congress president. By 1998, Mamata was not getting along with any group. Somen da (Somendra Mitra) was not at all aggressive towards the Left Front government and neither was Abdul Ghani Khan Chaudhary. The truth is that the Left Front government in West Bengal was so powerful that all the Congress satraps were eager to flee to the Centre. In contrast, Mamata Banerjee’s entire focus was West Bengal. She was unhappy with the factionalism and infighting among the state leaders. His aim was to somehow end the dominance of the Left in West Bengal. But for this, a new party should be formed parallel to Congress in the state. He formed Trinamool Congress but then he had to compromise with BJP.
Took support with BJP at the center and Congress in the state.
Any regional party has to maintain cordial relations with some national party. At that time, Mamata took the shade of the moderate BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The very next year after the formation of Trinamool, she joined the BJP-led NDA alliance. Also recover the cost of your support. Atal ji made him Railway Minister. After this, in 2000, in protest against the increase in petrol prices, Mamata and her party’s Ajit Kumar Panja resigned from the Vajpayee government and immediately withdrew their resignation. Then in 2001, he resigned again after the revelations of Operation West End and made a compromise with Congress in the assembly elections in West Bengal in the same year. At that time Pranab Mukherjee was the President of West Bengal Congress. Mamata Banerjee got the benefit of this agreement, she got 60 seats in the Legislative Assembly and Congress could get only 26 seats.
Mamta again joined NDA
In 2003, Mamata Banerjee again joined NDA. After this she again separated from NDA. This time Sudip Vandyopadhyay became a minister with him in the Vajpayee government. He got the Ministry of Coal and Mines. During his tenure, there was a ban on the sale of National Aluminum Company. There was a lot of discussion about it and his fame reached the national level. In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, she entered the electoral battle as an ally of the NDA, but this time the NDA also lost and Mamata Banerjee’s party also suffered huge losses. Only Mamta could win the election. In 2005, Mamata Banerjee’s party TMC lost the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. Mayor Ajay Mukherjee also left TMC. After this, Mamta also contested with NDA in the 2006 assembly elections. There was a very bad defeat and his party was reduced from 60 to 30 in the assembly.
Protest against Benny Santosh
After this she became aggressive on the left parties in the Lok Sabha. Since Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee belonged to CPI(M), Mamata Banerjee started confronting him on every issue. On August 4, 2006, he submitted his resignation to Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal. She was angry at Speaker Somnath Chatterjee’s rejection of her adjournment motion on the issue of Bangladeshi infiltrators. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya of the Left Front government of West Bengal came up with a new industrial development policy and started acquiring the land of farmers. Benny Santosho, CEO of Indonesia-based Salim Group, had assured of huge investment in West Bengal. For this he was given agricultural land in Howrah. Trinamool started protests against Benny Santosh. Because of this Beni Santosh retreated.
Protest in Singur and Nandigram also
Then TMC also demonstrated in Singur and Nandigram on the land acquisition for Tata Group’s Nano car factory in Singur. A factory could not be set up here also. The project of developing SEZ (Special Economic Zone) in Nandigram got stuck but Mamata Banerjee was bent upon attacking Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s industrial development policy like a lioness. Due to this Buddhadeb Babu became defensive. On the other hand, in the center also the left parties separated from the government in protest against Manmohan Singh’s nuclear policy. Because of this, Congress’s UPA government was indirectly provoking Mamata Banerjee. That is why Mamata fought the 2009 Lok Sabha elections with the UPA alliance. This alliance got 26 seats. Mamta got the post of Railway Minister in the UPA-2 government. The confrontation between Pranab Mukherjee and Manmohan at the Center was favorable for him. Next year, TMC also won in Kolkata Municipal Corporation.
From Railway Minister to Chief Minister in UPA-2
Mamata Banerjee got a massive victory in the 2011 West Bengal Assembly elections and overthrew 34 years of Left rule. He had fought this election with the UPA, but it is also true that he had taken Congress workers with him. As a result, Mamata got 184 seats and 42 Congress MLAs were elected. 148 seats are required for majority. Next year, Mamata Banerjee broke ties with the UPA-2 government at the Center regarding FDI. Now she was the only lioness of West Bengal. Mamata was a staunch opponent of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in retail trade. This year Pranab Mukherjee was made the President. For the first time a Bengali became the President. It was a matter of pride for Bengal, yet in 2014, Congress got only 4 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. CPM and BJP got two seats each and TMC got 34 seats. The total seats here are 42.
This is a ker-ber relationship!
President Pranab Mukherjee had attributed Congress’s defeat in the West Bengal Lok Sabha elections to Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. He also revealed this in his autobiography The Presidential Years, published after his death. In this he also said that if he had been made the Prime Minister, perhaps the Congress would not have suffered such a bad fate. He also pointed fingers at the working system of Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi. However, the closeness with Sonia Gandhi because of whom Mamata Banerjee first left Congress, formed Trinamool and betrayed and betrayed UPA is surprising. But now with the future of TMC hanging in the balance, Mamata is eager to merge with Congress again. But will this coordination last long? Because this is a one-to-one relationship.
Leave a Reply