Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday ruled out an alliance with the Congress in Bengal for the general elections, a day after Rahul Gandhi had offered her an olive branch, prompting the party high command to declare that INDIA was unimaginable without her.
The Bengal chief minister, on her way to a state government event in East Burdwan, told journalists in the afternoon that she had not had any seat-sharing talks with the Congress.
“No, I have not had any talks (with the Congress). I have not had any talks with anybody. The proposal I had given, they had rejected at the very start. Since then, our party has decided to go it alone in Bengal,” the Trinamul chief said. She, however, reaffirmed her pledge as a secular force willing to do anything to defeat the BJP.
“But right now, there is no discussion… absolutely wrong. It is wrong,” Mamata said, a day after Rahul issued a statement on the sidelines of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra saying that seat-sharing negotiations were underway with her party.
Rahul said during an interaction with journalists on Tuesday: “Mamataji and I are on very good terms personally, and so is the party.”
“Yes, some little things keep happening. Sometimes, somebody says something from their side, sometimes, somebody says something from our side. These are natural things, these are not things that are going to disrupt anything,” Rahul said.
The Congress appears in an uncomfortable spot with the party sharing space with Trinamul and the CPM within the INDIA combine while being at daggers drawn with Trinamul in Bengal and in an on-again, off-again relationship with the consistently friendly CPM.
Mamata did not seem impressed with the olive branch from Rahul. Bringing up the Yatra, she said the Congress had not even bothered to let her know about its passage through Bengal.
“Their rally, have they told us about it? As a matter of courtesy? I am an INDIA ally. Did they let me know, ‘Didi, we are going to your state’? No, they did not,” Mamata said on Wednesday.
“Therefore, there are no terms whatsoever with me, as far as Bengal is concerned,” she added, in an apparent response to what Rahul had said on Tuesday.
“About the all-India scenario, what we will do, what we won’t, we will think about that after the election.”
However, she was quick to add: “We are a secular party, we will do anything necessary to defeat the BJP.”
Asked whether she would stay on in INDIA, Mamata said it was not the monopoly of any one entity. “It does not belong exclusively to someone. Us regional parties, we will remain together,” Mamata said.
“We have said that they are free to contest 300 seats on their own, while the regional parties will fight in the remaining seats,” she added, referring to her December 19 proposal to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge for his party to directly take on the BJP in 300 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, leaving the rest for INDIA allies. She had mooted a 1:1 formula, which implies fielding a single INDIA candidate from each seat, the one with the highest winnability against the BJP nominee.
“Do not interfere there (in the 243 seats for regional parties). If they do interfere there, we will figure it out differently then,” Mamata warned.
The Trinamul chief’s expression of displeasure prompted a placatory statement from Jairam Ramesh, Congress general secretary (communications), who urged focus on her unwavering commitment to fighting the BJP.
“Mamataji is a big leader of Trinamul, of Bengal, of India. Trinamul is a very important pillar of INDIA. Without Mamataji, we cannot even imagine the alliance,” he said.
Sources in Trinamul said nothing was set in stone yet and Mamata could still consider setting aside up to four seats for the Congress in Bengal if approached amicably.
“One proper phone call from Sonia Gandhi, with whom she still has a great relationship, or a duly pliant message from Rahul could still save this alliance, with regard to Bengal,” said a Trinamul MP.
“She was willing to set aside two seats for them, they went about issuing statements demanding 7, 8, 9, 12, without trying to talk to her properly first…. She might still be willing to yield up to four,” he added.
The Congress state unit wants to contest in at least seven seats out of Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha constituencies. Besides Behrampore and Malda South (which they won in 2019), the Congress is said to be keen on Murshidabad, Jangipur, Malda North, Raiganj, Darjeeling, Purulia and Basirhat.
At the December 19 INDIA meeting, Mamata had clearly said she was willing to discuss the tie-up with the Congress for the state and was not averse to being a considerate ally in the negotiations.
But the likes of Behrampore MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Mamata’s bete noire who is not only the state unit chief of the Congress but also its leader in the Lok Sabha, has since thrown a spanner in the works, telling Rahul that even in his “worst nightmare” he could not imagine taking her help for elections in Bengal.
Even on Wednesday, the Congress’s chief spokesperson for Bengal, Soumya Aich Roy, responded with derision.
“This is inevitable, given her political compulsions. The BJP and Trinamul are shaking in fear on account of the success of Rahul Gandhi’s Yatra…. We have been saying for so long that she cannot ever be genuine in her opposition to the BJP because they are two sides of the same coin,” Aich Roy said.
Virtually echoing him, CPM state secretary Md. Salim added that INDIA is not about seat-sharing alone.
“She has been insisting on nothing but seat-sharing. We want to talk about the neeti (policy) not the neta (leader), but how will Trinamul talk about any neeti, being fueled solely by (Mamata’s) prime ministerial ambition?” asked Salim.
“It seems that they have now been reassured by the Prime Minister that the central agencies are no longer going to chase (Mamata’s nephew) Abhishek Banerjee,” he added.
The BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad said this was always going to be the case in the INDIA space.
“Selfish, opportunist people have come together for an alliance, so this was always most likely. They neither have a neta nor any neeti…. The people will surely elect Narendra Modi for a third consecutive term,” he said.