The poll bugle has been sounded in West Bengal.
It was blown on this year’s first Sunday from Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground by the Communist Party of India – Marxist, a party that once ruled the state but does not have a single seat in the Assembly today and is desperate to make a political comeback. Its youth wing, the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), organised a massive rally called ‘Insaaf Brigade’, pulling off a turnout that the CPI(M) can be proud of. They need to convert these crowds into votes and have good reason to try and be first off the block this election season.
But Mamata Banerjee? Not about to let any grass grow under her feet and just about 48 hours after the CPI(M)’s muscle flexing at Brigade, the chief minister turned a government meeting into her maiden election rally and drew the battle lines. Mamata called the INDIA ally CPI(M) a ‘terrorist party’, tactically held her silence on the Congress, and took the Bharatiya Janata Party head-on – on Ayodhya, its agency raj and its threats to implement the Citizenship Amendment Act before the first vote was cast in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Was it, however, the best time for her to launch her campaign, even if it was a soft launch?
TMC’s testy internal issues
The new year has kicked off to a rocky start for the Trinamool Congress. Just five days into it, supporters of an influential TMC leader of the Sandeshkhali panchayat, Sheikh Sahajahan, attacked officials of the Enforcement Directorate and jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force when they went to search Shahjahan’s home in connection with the ration scam. The issue has snowballed into a political storm with the Ministry of Home Affairs demanding an explanation about the mob violence.
That was last Friday. This Friday, ED is raiding the homes of a TMC minister, Sujit Bose, senior leader Tapas Roy, and a former municipal chief allegedly for links with a recruitment scam in municipal bodies.
The TMC is already grappling with the coal scam, the sand scam, the cow scam and the teachers’ job scam. Was Mamata Banerjee rushed into election mode by the CPI(M)’s Brigade rally?
Whether or not that is so, the TMC is confronting a testy issue internally too: that of a generation gap. For several months now, the party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who is 36 years old and Mamata’s heir apparent, has been harping on a retirement age for politicians. He has said a 60-year-old can’t work as hard as a 35-year-old and the old must give way to the new.
His acolytes say, yes, the old guard has a place in the party but can’t hang on to Assembly and Parliamentary seats forever, surely.
Also read: The Left wants to come back with its own yatra in West Bengal
Old guard vs new
Most founding members of the TMC – those who were with Mamata when she broke from the Congress and formed her own party 25 years ago – are senior citizens, in their 60s and 70s, and outraged at the broad hints that the young Turks are dropping. Initially, they were hesitant to voice their displeasure with Abhishek and his supporters but it is hard to keep a cap on something as sensitive as this.
Mamata, who had tried to keep the peace mostly with silence, has now spoken out. While on stage recently with a host of retired bureaucrats whom she has retained as advisors to the state government, she said: “We don’t bid farewell to those who are capable of working even at the age of 60. We utilise their expertise and experience.”
That seemed like the last word in the argument. But she drove home the point on Wednesday when she met with leaders from the West Midnapore district on poll preparations. Abhishek was present; he sat a few seats away from her and said little. Mamata, however, laid down the law and warned she would throw out anyone who publicly crossed swords on the issue in the future.
Retirement age is an old problem that every political party has grappled with – from the BJP and the Congress to the CPI(M). The last, at one time, was mocked as a geriatric party. But the TMC is a young party and confronting the issue for the first time – no wonder it is proving to be so thorny. The CPI(M) seems to have learnt its lesson and passed the baton. The DYFI, which marched for 50 days from north to south Bengal before calling the Brigade rally on 7 January, pulled off a stellar show where the only veteran leader on stage was Politburo member and CPI(M) state secretary Mohammed Salim.
A new thinking was also evident in the way the rally unfolded. Instead of songs usually heard at Left rallies, like The Internationale or We Shall Overcome, there was Rabindra Sangeet. The rally ended not with calls of inquilab (revolution) but with the reading of the Preamble. Most out of the box was the Indian tricolour flying high above the white DYFI flags at the venue. It was a first.
Also read: In Bengal, ED, CBI ‘helping the TMC’ as justice in scams get delayed
Time to regain lost ground
So, the generation gap debate in TMC may not be all bad news. But it is not what the party needs as it heads into an election that is challenging on multiple fronts. Most crucial: the need to regain ground lost in the 2019 Lok Sabha election when its tally of seats plummeted from 34 out of 42 in the state to a stunning 22 and BJP’s shot up from two to 18. Most analysts suspect that 18 was a flash in the pan and there is no question of a repeat performance. But the BJP is not just sitting around. And the TMC cannot leave it to chance.
Alliance politics also promises to be thorny for the TMC. At the soft launch of her poll campaign on Tuesday, Mamata Banerjee attacked the CPI(M) and the BJP but said not a word about the Congress, indicating she is open to seat sharing with this partner in the INDIA alliance. But the signs are not propitious. She has indicated she is willing to let the Congress fight the two seats that it won last time: Beherampore and Malda South. But none other.
Congress, on the other hand, reportedly wants 10 seats out of the 18 that the BJP holds. But TMC is not budging. Latest reports suggest it has declined to meet with the Congress’ national alliance committee on seat sharing for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
The TMC has said there’s no question of seat sharing with the CPI(M), which made it clear that the feeling was mutual.
Given these tensions, whatever happens to INDIA in the rest of the country, in Bengal its prospects seem dim. Not good news when 2024 is sure to be a decisive poll for everyone, certainly for the political parties in Bengal that have gone into election mode early in the day but may discover to their dismay the twisted version of the old proverb about early birds catching the worms.
The twisted one says, it is the early worm that gets eaten up.
The author is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)