Mamata Banerjee has a look at books written by her own during the Kolkata Book Fair.
Kolkata: Politician Mamata Banerjee has now been joined by her lesser-known author avatar to blame the Congress for the failure of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc to dislodge the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from power in the Centre in the Lok Sabha elections held in April-May 2024.
“The Congress does not have any significant support base of its own. It was because of the allies that it could win some seats. The I.N.D.I.A. failed due to the failure of the Congress,” Banerjee wrote in her book, Banglar Nirbachan O Amra (Elections in Bengal and Us), which was published at the 48th Kolkata Book Fair that the chief minister of West Bengal, herself, inaugurated on in the state capital on Tuesday.
The Trinamool Congress chief wrote that her party had sincerely wanted to help forge a formidable nationwide alliance against the BJP with all opposition parties.
“I insisted right from the beginning that we should project a face and contest the elections with a common manifesto and common minimum programme,” Banerjee wrote, adding that it was her idea to adopt I.N.D.I.A. (Indian National Developmental, Inclusive Alliance) as the name of the opposition bloc.
She referred to the appointment of the Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge as the chairman of I.N.D.I.A. in January 2024. “To make sure that the Congress does not feel slighted, its leader was placed at the helm of the opposition alliance. But, despite all these, the I.N.D.I.A. could neither have a common manifesto, nor a common minimum programme before the Lok Sabha elections,” she wrote, laying the blame on the grand old party. “It was because of this failure, the BJP managed to stay on in power despite losing the majority in the Lok Sabha.”
The TMC supremo reiterated her allegation that the Congress in West Bengal had joined hands with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the BJP to beat her party.
The Banglar Nirbachan O Amra was one of Banerjee’s three books published at the Kolkata Book Fair – the two others being Lipibaddha Kichhu Kaaj (Records of Some Works) and Salute 2. She had authored several books in the past too.
Banerjee led the TMC to win 29 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from West Bengal while the BJP could win only 12 – six less than its 2019 tally. The Congress won one seat, while its ally CPI(M) drew a blank.
Though the rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee doctor at a hospital in Kolkata on August 9 last year triggered widespread outrage against the TMC government, the party won the bye-elections in all the six Assembly constituencies in West Bengal in November, proving that the mass agitation could not make a dent in its support base.
Buoyed by the back-to-back electoral success of the TMC, Banerjee late last year positioned herself as a claimant to the leadership of I.N.D.I.A. and elicited support from stalwarts like Sharad Pawar and Lalu Prasad Yadav.
The last session of Parliament saw TMC MPs refusing to join their counterparts in the Congress and other I.N.D.I.A. parties in the protest in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha against the alleged links between the BJP and the billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani, who was recently indicted in a US federal court for allegedly conspiring to commit securities and wire fraud.