A defanged Mamata and Opposition unity

All that the BJP needs to do to thwart the Opposition's unity efforts is to take three leaders out of the equation – Mamata, Kejriwal and KCR

In a rather strange defence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has given him a clean chit on using central investigative agencies against his political opponents. Her argument is that since the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) reports to the Home Minister, the prime minister is blameless for its misuse.

The argument is disingenuous for someone who knows that there is no dyarchy at the Centre. It ties in with another uncharacteristic statement by her that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not all bad and that there are some good people in it. Whatever compulsions are driving Banerjee to appease the prime minister and the RSS, they will diminish her chances of being the centre of Opposition unity for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Banerjee clearly has not been her combative self ever since her meeting with then state Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma at Raj Bhavan in Darjeeling on July 13 this year. The meeting was followed by her decision that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) would abstain from voting in the Vice-Presidential election in which Dhankhar was the Bharatiya Janata Party's candidate. Six days later, when the CBI filed its first charge-sheet in the Eastern Coalfields coal pilferage scam against 41 accused, the names of her nephew Abhishek Banerjee and his wife Rujira Narula Banerjee were missing from it. The Enforcement Directorate case against Banerjee's nephew, however, is still ongoing.

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Banerjee seeking a one-to-one meeting with Prime Minister Modi, which took place on August 5 in Delhi, is also raising speculations. It was supposedly about urging the Centre to release nearly Rs 18,000 crore that the state claimed as its dues under MNREGA, PM Awas Yojana and PM Gram Sadak Yojana. However, this could have been easily accomplished by the state Chief Secretary meeting the relevant department secretaries in Delhi.

It is also significant that immediately after her meeting with the prime minister, Banerjee decided to attend a meeting of the Niti Ayog. This was a big step for her as she had boycotted all its meetings chaired by the prime minister up to now. In fact, ever since the Niti Ayog was created as the successor to the Planning Commission, Banerjee was extremely critical of it.

Banerjee's conciliatory overtures to the prime minister and the RSS have created misgivings amongst West Bengal's BJP leaders. Former West Bengal state president of the BJP and former Governor of Tripura and Meghalaya, Tathagata Roy, speculated on Twitter about a possible secret understanding. He tagged PM Modi, saying, "Kolkata is agog with (the) apprehension of a 'setting', (a colloquialism for a secret understanding), between Modiji and Mamata, whereby the thieves of Trinamool and/or the murderers of BJP workers would go scot-free. Please convince us that the wud be no such 'setting'." Another Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh tweeted, "Mamata Banerjee uses her meetings with Modiji to convey the message that a 'setting' has been reached with the BJP Central leaders", and warned them against such cross-messaging.

There has been speculation that a Gujarat corporate house, which has received several contracts in West Bengal, convinced Banerjee to mellow her attacks on the prime minister. But an explanation for actions that would undermine her own political future as the potential leader of a united Opposition has to go deeper. It would have to be something that threatens her political existence itself. The timing of her meeting with Dhankhar and Himanta Biswa Sarma may provide a clue. It took place against the backdrop of the BJP engineering a successful split in the Shiv Sena to bring down the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi government.

Also Read | Mamata playing 'hide-and-seek' by giving clean chit to PM Modi on misuse of agencies: Congress

There are rumours that the TMC is virtually split between the loyalists of the aunt and the nephew. Perhaps Banerjee is apprehensive of the BJP doing an Eknath Shinde on her by splitting the TMC, removing her as Chief Minister and replacing her with her nephew, supported by the BJP. Abhishek Banerjee may have little choice between the option of going to jail and becoming the chief minister. If he is unwilling to betray his aunt, a split could still be engineered. The BJP leaders in the state have repeatedly been claiming that the Mamata Banerjee government will not last beyond December this year.

A tamed and mellowed Mamata Banerjee could continue to be in power in West Bengal, but pressure from the Centre will not allow her to be part of a united Opposition. The BJP will have made her predicament like that of Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh – forced to go it alone and fearful of the consequences of joining the Opposition's unity efforts.

All that the BJP needs to do to thwart the Opposition's unity efforts is to take three leaders out of the equation – Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal and K Chandrasekhar Rao. Each one has prime ministerial ambitions and will not go with the other two. All of them are being softened up through the ED and CBI raids. If the BJP is successful, then in at least half a dozen states – West Bengal, Telangana, Delhi, Punjab, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh - there will be no one-to-one contests between the BJP and the Opposition. These three leaders, however, would give up the ambition of becoming the centre of Opposition unity, only and only if their very survival in their home state came under direct political threat.

(Bharat Bhushan is a journalist based in Delhi)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.