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Mamata Banerjee's proposed anti-BJP front likely to face leadership crisis

Despite her initiative to form a nationwide alliance against the BJP for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Mamata herself is not sure who will be the face of this front
Last Updated 17 August 2021, 08:16 IST

Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee’s effort to create an anti-BJP front by uniting the opposition parties suffers from the same major flaw which plagued the saffron party in the West Bengal Assembly elections. So far her proposed opposition front has no clear face or leader.

Despite her initiative to form a nationwide alliance against the BJP for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Mamata herself is not sure who will be the face of this front. When asked by journalists during her visit to Delhi, Mamata gave vague replies such as “it will be decided in future” or “I am not a leader but only a cadre.”

The conflicting ambitions of the concerned opposition parties and differing political compulsions in the states may not make the selection of the face of such an alliance a smooth one.

Fresh from her thumping victory over the BJP, Mamata has the political momentum on her side. But with only 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, and the TMC not having any presence in other states, it is unlikely that it will have numerical superiority over other alliance partners, especially the Congress.

Even the grand old party has strong state-level differences with the likes of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh respectively.

The same issue of not having a clear face ahead of polls played a key role in BJP’s defeat in the West Bengal Assembly elections and was the reason behind Mamata’s proposed United India alliance failing in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The Bengal BJP leadership is confident that like the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, this time also Mamata’s proposed opposition unity will fizzle out.

“At that time Mamata Banerjee held a United India rally in Kolkata with several opposition party leaders and everyone knows what happened after that,” said State BJP president Dilip Ghosh.

Speaking to DH, political analyst and author Snigdhendu Bhattacharya said “The proposed united opposition against the BJP will face the same problem of not having any face which they faced in the last Lok Sabha elections. But this time they have started well in advance and will get more time to resolve the issue.”

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(Published 31 July 2021, 13:27 IST)

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