Mamata Banerjee on Friday defended her party’s performance in Goa, underscoring the Trinamul Congress’s three-month campaign before the election there, before ruing its alliance partner’s decision to pledge support to the BJP.

A day after the results, which gave Trinamul zero seats and a vote share of 5.21 per cent (in 26 out of 40 Assembly seats it contested in), the Bengal chief minister firmly threw her weight behind the Goa show.

“Listen, in Goa, Trinamul just started out. We have already got six per cent of the vote share. It is more than enough, within three months (she launched it on October 29 last year),” said Mamata in a virtual interaction with journalists after the Budget in the Assembly.

The comments, a source said, were aimed at tackling murmurs within the party — from both the so-called old guard and the new — that the excursion to the western state was a “Prashant Kishor-made blunder”.

Asked whether her party’s attempts to widen its footprint beyond Bengal would continue, she said: “It will continue. It will continue. But we will work with our friends also.”

A senior Trinamul leader pointed out that the BJP took 10 years to win its first Goa seat, in 1994, while the Congress took nine years, till 1972, and the AAP took five years since 2017.

In response to a question on Trinamul’s Goa ally, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), which — with two seats and 7.6 per cent vote share from contesting in 14 seats — pledged support to the BJP, Mamata said she wasn’t pleased.

“It was a pre-poll alliance, and now Trinamul doesn’t have any MLA. So they (the MGP) have decided that they would decide their own policy,” she said.

The support of the two-MLA MGP was key to the 20-MLA BJP staking claim to forming the government, with 21 being the majority mark in the state. The BJP also claimed support of three Independents.

“But the pre-poll alliance was on the basis of the understanding that they should not join the BJP, and we oppose that. We don’t like it,” said Mamata.

A Trinamul insider said Mamata’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee — known otherwise for illimitable support for Kishor — was “quite displeased” with not only how flawed the poll consultant’s choices and strategy with regard to Goa were but also how he had allegedly been trying to distance himself from the party’s performance in the western state.

“These guys (Team Kishor) had been in Goa since July (2021) and did the groundwork for three months, till the end of September. Those like Luizinho Faleiro came to Calcutta (for joining Trinamul) and issued public statements that he had only been in touch with PK…. For the longest time, leaders like Mahua (Moitra) and Sushmita (Dev) were simply implementing the agency agenda there,” said the insider.

“The difference is that Abhishek came back last night, and issued a statement of humility and conviction, at the airport. Prashant, in the last eight of his major interviews, was seen trying to distance himself from the Goa campaign. He can’t escape this so easily,” he added.

Mamata has been displeased for some time with the Goa foray, which was predictably not going to yield much. The western state, according to several Trinamul sources, was picked by Kishor and endorsed by Abhishek.

Mamata, having realised quickly how badly the Goa foray was likely to turn out, distanced herself from it since the middle of December last year.

“Dissociation from the Goa campaign at the correct time, thankfully, left the Mamata Banerjee brand intact,” said a source.

Goa was one of several factors responsible for the recent, unprecedented internal crisis in the party, which caused a drastic deterioration in the aunt and the nephew’s relationship, with Kishor almost being fired.

A senior in Trinamul, in the know of the developments over Goa within the so-called AB-PK team, said the national general-secretary was “well aware” that Kishor’s strategies could also be “very flawed”.

“The buck stops with the party. The party made the strategic blunder of allowing the agency to lead the campaign, putting the cart before the horse,” he said, underscoring the need to play the long game in a state like Goa.

“This mergers and acquisitions model doesn’t work. Trying to grow inorganically was a major mistake. As was relying on the resurrection of careers of has-beens…. Prashant single-handedly mishandled Goa. The sheen of his supposed invincibility is wearing off… he clearly is fallible and beatable,” he added. “Trinamul will shift gears in its engagement with I-PAC.”