The Bengal CPM, visibly upbeat after arch-adversary Mamata Banerjee’s repeated public assertions of a virtual withdrawal from the INDIA grouping, on Thursday joined Rahul Gandhi in his Murshidabad leg of the Nyay Yatra.

A day after Mamata accused the Marxists of using their influence on the Congress to spoil her “good understanding” with it, the CPM mocked her, underscoring its oft-repeated prediction that she would abandon the anti-BJP bloc before the general election.

Through vast stretches of the Murshidabad route of the Yatra, CPM flags were brandished alongside those of the Congress and the national flag, while Trinamul jeered at the Marxists for their alleged desperation.

The Congress high command, taking a line at odds with its Bengal unit, yet again issued a statement of optimism — of being able to retain Mamata in the INDIA coalition and sealing a seat deal in Bengal.

The CPM state committee, led by state secretary Md Salim and central committee member Sujan Chakraborty, met Rahul and his Yatra entourage
at Piyarapur in Murshidabad, vowing to stand by nyay (justice) in the fight against the division of the nation through onyay (injustice).

“We are not here to discuss the alliance but to offer our wholehearted support to this endeavour. Alliance talks will take place in party offices,” a beaming Salim said.

He made no attempt to conceal his pleasure at the Bengal chief minister’s recent declarations about going it alone in the state in the general election, and her unwillingness to participate in the Yatra despite repeated requests from the Congress high command.

“Mamata has been firing her gun at the Congress, off our shoulders…. Everybody got on the (INDIA) train, but we cannot guarantee who will get off where,” Salim said.

“Mamata Banerjee has now, unsurprisingly, said, ‘Stop the train, I will disembark’. We are saying, ‘You are welcome to’.”

On Wednesday at Berhampore in Murshidabad, Mamata had said: “We had a good understanding with the Congress… if somebody played foul, it was the CPM. The CPM is today the biggest agent of the BJP.”

Rahul Gandhi in Jangipur, Murshidabad, on Thursday. Picture by Samim Aktar

Over the past few days, Mamata has repeatedly accused the CPM of getting in the way of her alliance talks with the Congress, often underscoring how the CPM was encouraging a negative approach towards her within the INDIA grouping.

The Trinamul chief’s displeasure at the delay in sealing seat shares has been exacerbated by the state Congress’s attacks on her and its attempts to drive a hard bargain, besides the relentless, militant opposition to her from the CPM.

This has, however, coincided with an increasingly placatory approach from a Congress high command cornered by the serious setbacks handed by the AAP and the body blow dealt by the JDU’s departure.

Throughout the Nyay Yatra, and not only in the Bengal leg, Rahul has spoken well of Mamata or at least avoided publicly criticising her despite the attacks from the Bengal chief minister. But his party’s state unit has been belligerently returning the fire.

Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh, who has over the past few days been consistently mollycoddling Mamata, refused to budge from his — effectively, the high command’s — optimism about eventually pulling off a seat-sharing arrangement with her in Bengal.

This despite her assertion on Wednesday that she was now willing to offer none of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats to the Congress.

“In an alliance, dynamics of give and take exist. We remain hopeful of arriving at a consensus on a joint seat-sharing formula in the state, one that is satisfactory to all parties involved,” Ramesh, part of Rahul’s entourage, said at Jangipur.

“Mamataji has, on several occasions, expressed her commitment to INDIA, and we welcome this.”

Asked about Mamata’s refusal to offer even a single seat to the Congress in Bengal on account of its alignment with the CPM, which she says would strengthen the BJP’s chances in the state, Ramesh said he had heard about this.

“It reflects her opinion, not the consensus of the bloc. Trinamul and the Congress have the common goal of defeating the BJP…. The shared objective — of paramount importance to all INDIA constituents — is to oust the BJP,” he said.

“In Bengal, we have to ensure that the BJP is defeated in the 18 seats it won in 2019,” he added.

In response to the CPM’s refusal to ally with Mamata in Bengal, Ramesh said that representatives of the Marxists and all other major Left parties had been part of every major INDIA exercise, alongside Trinamul and the Congress.

Sources in not just Trinamul but also the Congress high command believe that the biggest hurdle to a settlement in Bengal is the militant resistance from state Congress chief Adhir Chowdhury, backed by party general secretary and working committee member Deepa Das Munshi.

While Mamata on Thursday reiterated her go-it-alone stand in Nadia, Trinamul state general secretary Kunal Ghosh — widely seen as a mouthpiece of her nephew and heir apparent Abhishek Banerjee — ridiculed the CPM.

“The CPM, which is fussing over pictures with Rahul Gandhi today, had called his grandmother (Indira Gandhi) a witch; cartoons of Rahul’s father (Rajiv Gandhi) had been used as graffiti, calling him a thief. They had also joined hands with the BJP to oust him (Rajiv, in 1989),” Ghosh said in a Bengali post on X.

“Now if you (the CPM) fight alone, your deposits will be forfeited in all 42 seats; that is why the CPM is roaming around greedily, like a madman.”