Tough battle for Congress to keep Bengal strongholds

By Sirshendu Panth

Kolkata, April xx (IANS) Having ceded most of its organisational strength and leadership to Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress over the past two decades, the Congress is fighting to retain its remaining handful of pockets in West Bengal in the coming Lok Sabha polls. However, the failure of seat adjustment talks with the Left Front has further queered the pitch for the Grand Old Party.

The desertion of the young Malda North MP Mausam Benazir Noor, who is now contesting the seat as a Trinamool nominee, has also come as a setback to the Congress, whose leaders are hoping to win "four-five" of Bengal's 42 parliamentary seats.

Twenty-two years ago, in the 1996 general elections, the Congress got nine out of the 42 seats. But, more importantly, it secured 40.09 per cent of the popular mandate. Cut to 2014: the Congress won four seats, but polled only 9.68 per cent of the valid votes.

The sharp drop in the Congress' voting percentage brings out the extent of its marginalisation, largely a fallout of the birth of the Trinamool Congress on New Year's Day in 1998 after Banerjee broke away from Congress ranks, alleging it was not sincere in fighting the then ruling Left Front spearhead CPI-M.

The story of the next 20 years is the gradual expansion of the Trinamool from a party concentrated in and around Kolkata to one with firm roots in every district, town and village of the state. The Congress' decline has been inversely proportional to Trinamool's growth.

In between, the Congress tied up with the Trinamool thrice - briefly in 2001 (for the assembly poll), and then for the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, and finally, ahead of the 2011 assembly elections, when the alliance defeated the Left Front and Banerjee took over as the Chief Minister. The two parties, however, divorced within 16 months.

State Congress vice-president Om Prakash Misra feels the party leadership made two big mistakes by tying up with Banerjee, and also in the way the alliance was formed in 2011 "by giving in to her without rhyme and reason".

"She has successfully manipulated her way. There was never any sense of political geography in the way we gave her prime seats. Even many of our MLAs were denied tickets," Mishra told IANS.

The process of Congress' marginalisation fast tracked after Banerjee became Chief Minister.

Determined to expand her party in districts where it still lacked a base, Banerjee's confidantes roped in Congress legislators, district and block functionaries and grassroot workers, not to speak of the many leading lights of the party who migrated to Trinamool.

Consequently, the Congress continues to shrink, though it has managed to hold on to a support base of around nine percent.

Congress' Rajya Sabha member and former state party chief Pradip Bhattacharya concedes that the party now hardly has a base outside half a dozen districts - North Dinajpur, Murshidabad, Malda, Darjeeling, Birbhum and Purulia - out of the state's 23. "In other districts, we are relatively weak".

With the Left Front also on a declining graph since 2011, the two forces joined hands for the assembly polls in 2016, but the alliance came a cropper.

The two again tried to come together ahead of the 2019 polls, but the talks collapsed.

Bhattacharya admits the failure of the seat sharing discussions would "hamper Congress prospects in 3-4 constituencies". But he claims the CPI-M would suffer maximum damage.

"I am doubtful whether they will win any seats this time".

Bhattacharya, however, says the failure of talks would indirectly help the Congress revive itself in the state.

"Due to the alliances we stitched before various polls, we didn't name candidates in many of the districts. As a result, our workers were frustrated. They had a clear disliking for the symbols of the Trinamool Congress or CPI-M. So, many of them became inactive.

"And again, there are always some political workers who can't sit idle in the poll season. They die to take part in election campaigns or organisational work related to polls. This section used to work for other parties in these districts during the elections," said Bhattacharya.

Now, with the party deciding to contest all 42 seats in the state, "our workers are brimming with excitement and enthusiasm".

"Our revival has now started. The results will be visible in 2021 (when assembly polls are scheduled)".

But how many seats is the Congress hoping to win this time? "Four to five seats definitely," Bhattacharya asserted.

In 2014, the Congress had bagged Malda North, Malda South, Jangipur and Baharampur. Despite the seat adjustment discussions going up in smoke, the Left Front has not put up candidates in Baharampur and Malda South, from where former state Congress president Adhir Chowdhury and Abu Hasem Khan Chowdhury are in the fray.

In Malda North, the Congress has nominated Isha Khan Choudhury, who is challenging his cousin Mausam.

Another sitting MP, Abhijit Mukherjee, son of former president Pranab Mukherjee, is fighting to retain Jangipur, while ex-union minister Deepa Dasmunshi is involved in a four-corner contest to regain Raiganj, which she had won in 2009 but lost in 2014.

Over the past few days, the Congress candidate getting the most media attention is new entrant and Tamluk nominee Lakshman Seth, an expelled CPI-M leader, who briefly flirted with the BJP and spent 118 days in prison as a prime accused in the 2007 Nandigram violence case.

While a section of the state Congress leadership had bitterly opposed Seth's entry, it is said Congress president Rahul Gandhi took the decision to allow him into the party.

Left Front legislature party leader Sujon Chakraborty says the Congress is "very weak" outside the periphery of some districts. "But we won't feel happy if the failure of our talks on seat sharing results in the BJP and the Trinamool winning more seats".

Political analyst Udayan Bandopadhyay predicts "tough times" for the Congress in the coming election. "I think the only seat they will surely win is Baharampur."

(Sirshendu Panth can be reached at s.panth@ians.in)