Mamata Banerjee on Monday refused to speculate about the INDIA bloc’s possible candidate for Prime Minister, saying the decision was best taken after the election results, but her party demanded in Calcutta that she be assigned leadership of the anti-BJP alliance.
The Trinamul Congress chief, in Delhi to attend an INDIA meeting on Tuesday and a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, said there were different views on the subject of projecting someone as the prime ministerial face.
She said the matter should be decided after the elections and cited the examples of former Prime Ministers H.D. Deve Gowda, I.K. Gujral and Manmohan Singh, each of them a post-poll consensus pick.
She was non-committal when asked whether Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge would, as a Dalit, be a good choice for prime ministerial candidate, saying: “How can I say alone?”
Asked whether Rahul Gandhi should opt out of the race for Prime Minister, Mamata said: “Why would you say like this? We will decide these matters jointly, after the elections.”
In Calcutta, Trinamul state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said that people were done with “photocopies” and wanted “an original” as leader.
“She is a seven-time MP, multiple-time Union minister, and three-time chief minister…. She defeated the BJP single-handedly in Bengal. The whole nation is imitating her policies and schemes,” said Ghosh, considered the mouthpiece of Mamata’s nephew and Trinamul No. 2 Abhishek Banerjee.
“The Congress lost the three Hindi heartland states contesting on its own. They did not take the INDIA spirit into the campaign…. Their feudal policies cannot go on any more…. Seniors like Mamata Banerjee, along with others, should immediately be brought to the fore to lead INDIA,” Ghosh said.
Mamata, asked about the INDIA meeting, called after the national Opposition’s electoral debacle in three Hindi heartland states, said the first priority was to “save the motherland from disaster” and autocracy.
Trinamul sources said the party’s top echelons were not entirely unhappy with the poll outcomes in these three states, since this is likely to restrict the Congress space in the INDIA bloc.
This can boost Mamata’s push for the so-called 1:1 formula — having a single INDIA candidate, the one with the highest winnability, in at least 330 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats. The Congress is in a direct battle with the BJP in 200-odd seats.
Mamata said there could be some divergent opinions in INDIA on the 1:1 formula, but if the majority of the parties agree, it could be realised. “Without discussing it (in INDIA), I cannot give my opinion in public,” she said.
Asked whether valuable time had not been lost in cementing the seat-sharing structure, Mamata said there was still time: “Better late than never.”
The Bengal chief minister was careful not to upset the applecart on the eve of the INDIA meeting, refusing to be drawn into whether the Congress should have treated its INDIA allies better in the run-up to the recent Assembly elections in five states.
Contesting the BJP narrative that it was certain to return to power in 2024, Mamata underlined that the NDA had lost the 2004 Lok Sabha elections after winning the November-December round of Assembly elections in 2003.
“This kind of arrogance is not good, 2024 is not a done deal,” she said.
Similarly, she said, the Congress had won Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in December 2018 but lost the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.
The Trinamul chief appeared confident that the Congress would not ask for more than two seats in Bengal, saying “they are also mature people”.
She indicated that her party was not averse to working with anybody, even the Left, if the situation warranted.
Mamata said she was willing to open a dialogue on seat-sharing with the Congress in Bengal. “Someone should bell the cat.”
On possible seat-sharing discussions at the INDIA meeting, she said: “There is... a great opportunity for a detailed discussion.”
She said it would not be easy to finalise the seat shares at a single meeting, but once an in-principle agreement is reached, “things would go smoothly, in my opinion”.
Mamata accused the BJP of arrogance and of making a “mockery of democracy”, referring to the mass suspension of Opposition members from Parliament.
“I feel fortunate I am not an MP now. Everyone is being suspended now,” she said. “One or two MPs could be suspended for a bad cause, but if they collectively suspend people... let them suspend the House then.”
She added: “The House is supreme…. If they suspend all (Opposition) members, how can they raise the voice of the people?
“Why did they suspend so many MPs? Have they become so arrogant just because they won two states? ...Nothing short of an autocracy. They are afraid… the voice of the people is being totally stopped and choked. They have no moral ground to run the House…. This is a mockery of democracy.”
Referring to the expulsion of Trinamul MP Mahua Moitra from the Lok Sabha earlier this session over cash-for-query allegations, Mamata said it was “a very bad case” as Moitra had been denied the chance to defend herself. “That also is very unfortunate,” she said.
Mamata asked why the Centre was pushing for three contentious bills to replace the Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure Act, and the Evidence Act, with the current government having barely three to four months left of its five-year term.
“They are passing important bills, including the three criminal law bills. We urged the government to hold their (passage) for now, and allow the new government to take oath first…. What is this hurry?” she said.
“The new government could have them reviewed. That is permitted in a democracy.”
Mamata on Monday met her parliamentary party members, senior journalists, and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. She met Kejriwal with Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray.