JOIN USDidi's national gambit to push Modi's hand
For the first time since she took charge of West Bengal in 2011, Mamata Banerjee has been elected the chairperson of the Trinamool Congress parliamentary party. It has surprised many because Mamata Banerjee is not a Member of Parliament (MP).
Her party's Rajya Sabha leader Derek O'Brien said, "The decision has been taken both at a conceptual and tactical level." What does the word 'tactical' signify here? The significance will not skip us if we realise that politics, apart from a ruthless game of strife on the ground, is also a mind game.
The decision is a signal that if the by-polls are not held in Bengal on time, forcing Mamata Banerjee to resign from the chief minister's post, she may devote much more time at the national level. An ingenious leader of mass movements, she may also hit the ground to lead agitations, like the farmers' protests, against the Narendra Modi government.
The firebrand didi, or elder sister of Bengal, paid a heavy price for her decision to contest the assembly election from Nandigram, the citadel of Suvendu Adhikari. Her former lieutenant had led the Nandigram movement on the ground, and she lost the election. Though she has assumed chief ministership, she is not a legislator. So she has to be elected to the state assembly within six months, to be precise, by November 4.
Beyond the stipulated six months, no one can be a minister is borne out from the Supreme Court verdict in a case related to J Jayalalithaa in 2001. A bench led by the then chief justice AS Anand said no non-elected person could be a minister again during the same term of the house without being elected as it "would be clearly derogatory to the constitutional scheme, improper, undemocratic and invalid."
But will bypolls for seven assembly constituencies of Bengal be held and results declared by November 4? The question has become wide open since the resignation earlier this month of Tirath Singh Rawat, a BJP MP who had taken charge as the Uttarakhand chief minister. He quit anticipating a bypoll will not be held in the prevailing pandemic situation by the first week of September. Is it then possible that bypolls might not be held within the next eight weeks in Bengal, especially since October is the month of the state's most important festival, the Durga puja?
Whether the bypolls would be held by November 4 is the prerogative of the Election Commission. It is, on paper, an independent body, but it has constantly been criticised by the opposition, including the Trinamool Congress, for playing a partisan role in favour of the BJP. Again, the poll body would need to have some administrative clearance from the central government, which may or may not be forthcoming in the context of the impending third wave of Covid-19.
If the bypolls are not held by November 4, Mamata Banerjee will have to resign, and it may plunge her government into chaos. It could have been easier for her to pass on the mantle to her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, though he is just 33. But he, too, is not a member of the state legislative assembly. With a third Covid-19 wave looming large, it will be risky to give the reigns to another non-MLA.
Again Subrata Mukherjee, the senior-most member of Mamata Banerjee's cabinet, and Firhad Hakim, the most prominent Muslim face of her party, stand charge-sheeted in the Narada case. The CBI may turn overactive to have them in custody again if entrusted with the charge of the state. Apart from them, Didi may choose any loyalist, but such a decision would run the risk of compromising administrative efficiency.
Under the circumstances, Mamata Banerjee has taken a big tactical step. Her first visit to Delhi this week - she landed in Delhi on Monday - after taking oath for the third time is a small step towards uniting the opposition. After all, the national election is still three years away, and many factors may change by then.
But if she gets dislodged as the chief minister, Mamata Banerjee may camp in Delhi and come up with one after another idea of leading mass movements, just as she did against the Left in Bengal for over two-and-a-half-decades. No leader in India can match her ingenuity and capability in planning and leading agitations.
But she cannot afford to devote so much time and energy at the national level if she remains the chief minister of Bengal. So the ball is now in team Narendra Modi's court. They have to pick between a Bengal CM and a national-level potentially lethal opponent.
(The writer is a Kolkata-based journalist and author)