The Left and the Congress fear Sagardighi MLA Bayron Biswas's defection to Trinamul will undermine efforts to project their tie-up as a credible force against Bengal's ruling party and the BJP.
Biswas's defection from the Congress had been in the making for weeks and did not take anybody in political circles by surprise.
“Our aim is to take on both Trinamul and the BJP. However, Biswas’s defection would allow our opponents to weave a counter-narrative that we couldn’t retain our lone MLA and hence, it was pointless to vote for us,” a source in the Congress said.
The Left-Congress alliance had been projecting the Sagardighi bypoll result as a glorious example of how both Trinamul and the BJP could be defeated by a third force in the state. Leaders of both the CPM and the Congress had claimed multiple times that the tie-up would yield rich political dividends for them in panchayat and general elections.
The bypoll result was also projected as evidence of the minority population gradually withdrawing its support from Mamata Banerjee. Around 65 per cent of Sagardighi’s voters are Muslims.
Hoping to control the damage from the defection, state Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury issued a belligerent statement.
“I ask all Congress workers not to be upset with this. Remember that the Congress is expanding in size and might in Bengal once again, every day,” said the Congress’s leader in the Lok Sabha.
He went on to vow to uproot Trinamul from Bengal.
“This defection only makes us more resolute. I can assure you that this game of poaching that Mamata Banerjee has started in Bengal will ultimately be the reason for her downfall.... We created Bayron Biswas, the product, which Trinamul bought today,” he said.
Chowdhury claimed that Biswas was a non-political person and had made repeated requests to be nominated as the Congress candidate for Sagardighi. Elsewhere, Biswas admitted to going to the Congress after being denied a Trinamul ticket.
Chowdhury also clarified Biswas’s conspicuous absence from the political scene for some time since his victory.
“We had invited him to all our programmes. But he refused to turn up,” Chowdhury said, replying to a question on Biswas’s claims he was not able to work in the Congress.
A section of leaders in the Congress claimed that Biswas’s defection would have little impact on the party because common workers and voters were joining their party in large numbers daily. On Monday, about 1,500 people joined the Congress after quitting Trinamul and the BJP at Rasulpur in Murshidabad’s Nabagram.
Md. Salim, the state secretary of the CPM, said the defection orchestrated by Trinamul national general-secretary Abhishek Banerjee would only antagonise the public further.
“There is no jowar (high tide) in Trinamuleyr Nabo Jowar. Everything is only bhata (low tide). People are disgusted with Trinamul for many reasons, this poaching business is one of them,” Salim said. “They have shown that they are so bankrupt that they had to poach even the lone MLA of the Left-Congress alliance. Such leaders come and go, but the people have made up their minds to defeat Trinamul and the BJP. They are neither strong nor honest enough to accept the people’s mandate.”
With Biswas defecting, a section of the CPM against the alliance with the Congress started reiterating their concerns.
The BJP took a dig at the CPM and the Congress.
“There is a (national) Opposition meeting in Patna in a few days. The Congress and Trinamul will both be there. I think this is Adhirbabu’s gift to the chief minister before that meeting. I had foretold that Bayron Biswas would join Trinamul and that is what happened. Now Bayron Biswas has become Mir Jafar Biswas,” Bengal BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar said, implying that Biswas was a traitor.
According to Majumdar, the defection proves that the “so-called” revival of the Left and the Congress in Bengal would remain a pipedream.
