JOIN USTMC MPs unanimously choose Mamata Banerjee as its parliamentary party's chairperson
The Trinamool Congress on Friday elected its supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as the chairperson of its parliamentary party – apparently to set the stage for her to play a wider role in national politics.
The party’s MPs in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha unanimously resolved to elect Banerjee as the chairperson of the All India Trinamool Congress Parliamentary Party, replacing Sudip Bandopadhyay. Derek O’Brien, the TMC’s MP in the upper House of Parliament, called it a “strategic decision” by his party.
The move came just ahead of her tour to New Delhi next week – a visit, which, according to the Trinamool Congress leaders, would be used to position herself for a more prominent role in national politics, particularly in the campaign by the opposition parties against the Union Government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
This is going to be the Trinamool Congress supremo’s first visit to New Delhi after she led her party to trounce the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the assembly elections in West Bengal in March and April this year.
Notwithstanding the BJP’s aggressive campaigning spearheaded by the Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Banerjee led the Trinamool Congress to win the mandate to rule West Bengal for five more years – the third consecutive term since 2011.
She is now keen to build on her success in stalling the BJP’s juggernaut in West Bengal and wants to play a larger role against the Modi government.
Banerjee is likely to meet Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and other leaders of the Congress during her stay in New Delhi. She will meet the leaders of other opposition parties too. Her nephew and the newly-appointed national general secretary of the party Abhishek Bandopadhyay already reached the national capital to lay the groundwork before her visit.
She is not a member of the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha, but the TMC still elected her as the chairperson of its parliamentary party. Sonia Gandhi too had not been an MP when she had taken over as the chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party in 1998.
Sudip Bandopadhyay will continue to be the leader of the TMC in the Lok Sabha.
The TMC announced the election of its supremo as the chairperson of its parliamentary party on a day one of its MPs in the Rajya Sabha, Shantanu Sen, was suspended from the House for the remaining days of the monsoon session of Parliament. Sen had snatched some papers from Information Technology minister, Ashwini Vaishnow, during protests by the opposition parties against the government over snooping controversy.
The TMC MPs in both the Houses of Parliament are likely to keep raising a host of national issues all through the monsoon session of Parliament, ranging from rising prices of petrol, diesel and cooking gas, the alleged failure of the Modi government in dealing with the second wave of the Covid-19 effectively and shortage of vaccines, decline in economic growth and the continuing protest by the farmers against the new agricultural laws.