A bitter war of words between Rahul Gandhi and Abhishek Banerjee over the political turf of poll-bound Meghalaya marked the highlight of the day when, ironically, both parties claimed to take on the BJP and its state ally, the NPP, as their prime opponents.

Speaking at a public rally in Shillong on Wednesday, one of his first political events since completing the Bharat Jodo yatra which was evident from the leader’s unkempt beard, Rahul Gandhi said: “You also know the history of TMC, you know the violence that takes place in Bengal. You know, the scams… the Saradha scam… that had taken place. You are aware of their tradition. They came to Goa and spent huge amounts of money. And their idea was to help the BJP. This is exactly their idea in Meghalaya. TMC’s idea in Meghalaya is to ensure that BJP is strengthened and they come to power.”

Gandhi’s attack on the Trinamul Congress, a somewhat rare utterance given the perceived cordial relationship TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee shares with former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, led to some raised eyebrows of poll watchers of the north eastern state. Clearly, the comment was aimed at a spot where it would hurt Trinamul the most and it seemed to have had the desired effect.

Hours after the Wayanad MP’s public remarks, TMC’s retort came from its Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee, who took to the social media to land his counter blows on some of the Congress’s softest spots. “Congress has failed to resist the BJP. Their irrelevance, incompetence and insecurity has put them in a state of delirium. I urge Rahul Gandhi to revisit their politics of vanity instead of attacking us. Our growth isn’t driven by money, it’s people’s love that propels us,” Banerjee tweeted.

“By the same logic when Congress contested 92 seats in Bengal elections in 2021, was their idea to help the BJP? (sic) Rahul Gandhi’s statements against the Trinamul Congress is pretty rich, especially coming from a party that has lost 40 out of the last 45 Assembly elections in India,” a follow-up tweet from Banerjee read.

Incidentally Abhishek accompanied Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to address a political rally at Rajabala at the Garo Hills of Meghalaya almost at the same time Gandhi took to stage in Shillong. Both Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek refrained from making a scathing attack from their public meeting on the Congress which is still believed to be enjoying some support in Meghalaya. “The Congress is asking for votes but it has lost that moral right,” the Bengal chief minister said at the Rajabala meeting, adding “I was in Congress before but they forced me to leave the party.”

Political observers believe that the defection of former Congress chief minister Mukul Sangma along with 12 of the 17 sitting MLAs of the party to the Trinamul in November 2021 dealt a body blow to the Congress in Meghalaya, then the principal Opposition party in the state, which could form the basis of Gandhi’s angst and his subsequent remarks about the Trinamul on Wednesday.

The Trinamul’s performance in Goa in February last year is a wound it may still be licking and on which Gandhi may have sprinkled fresh salt. The party failed to make a mark on the coastal state despite contesting the BJP in 26 seats in alliance with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and securing a little over 5 per cent of the votes polled. The party’s political prospects in the state suffered a further setback after its poll partner MGP extended its post poll support to the BJP and with Aam Admi Party making no attempts to hold hands with the Trinamul despite Arvind Kejriwal’s close ties with Mamata Banerjee.

Trinamul, many believe, is also fighting an uphill perception battle in its stronghold of Bengal in wake of the current school recruitment scam and some of its top leaders booked by central investigating agencies for coal and cattle smuggling cases. Gandhi’s reference to the Ponzi scam cases which led to several TMC leaders spending time behind bars would, doubtless, only ruffle feathers in the party’s top brass.

But that may not be all. Despite Trinamul’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee claiming that the party, in its attempt to secure political foothold outside the boundaries of Bengal, would be aiming for only those states where it would primarily be challenging the BJP, its election performances in states like Tripura have failed to dislodge the BJP from any of the power positions it currently holds.

Gandhi’s remarks could also lead to ringing bells of Mamata Banerjee’s checkered history with first, the BJP-led NDA-I regime as a partner of the Atal Behari Vajpayee government where she served as the Railways minister and followed by her alliance with the Congress-led UPA rule and her walking out of both which may find justification for the Congress leader’s “strengthening of BJP’s hand” theory.

The Congress, on the other hand, would certainly not want a reminder of its humiliating defeats in states like West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Goa, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat in just the last couple of years, a fact that Abhishek Banerjee has tried to draw attention to.

As fence sitters to this spat, the BJP top brass can only sport a wry smile.