'Congress leadership is BJP's biggest insurance': TMC fires salvo amid opposition woes

Amid the clamour for pan-India opposition unity, TMC on Monday claimed that the present leadership of the Congress party is BJP's "biggest insurance". It was reacting to West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury dubbing CM Mamata Banerjee as a 'BJP agent' citing that she was a part of the Union Cabinet led by the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Maintaining that it has been successfully defeating the saffron party in West Bengal after 2001, TMC urged Congress to put its own house in order. In the alternative, the Mamata Banerjee-led party asked Congress to step aside and let other parties lead the fight against BJP.

Hitting out at the Sonia Gandhi-led party on October 30, the WB CM was quoted as saying by PTI, "I cannot say everything right now because they didn't take politics seriously. Modiji is going to be more powerful because of the Congress...If one cannot take decision, why the country should suffer for that"? 

TMC's growing pan-India footprint

After a hard-fought election campaign, TMC sprung a surprise by decisively winning the 2021 West Bengal Assembly election by bagging 213 seats whereas BJP could win in only 77 constituencies. Buoyed by its third consecutive victory, TMC is mulling projecting Mamata Banerjee as the Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Making her national ambitions clear, Banerjee propagated the West Bengal model of governance in her Martyrs' Day rally speech on July 21.

Thereafter, she visited Delhi and met various opposition leaders including Congress president Sonia Gandhi. In an attempt to expand its base across the country, TMC has increased its political activities in Tripura and Goa aimed at emerging as an alternative to Congress. However, the party has riled Congress in the process by inducting many of its leaders such as Sushmita Dev, Abhijit Mukherjee and ex-Goa CM Luizinho Faleiro.

Incensed by the growing political capital of the Mamata Banerjee-led party, Congress recently accused TMC of indirectly helping BJP by dividing the secular votes. Slamming AAP and TMC in a press briefing on October 3, AICC Goa in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao said, "There are two forces working. One force is the fascist force of BJP which wants to completely control this country, completely keep everything under its command. They are trying to create an authoritarian state using the power of money. The second thing that is happening in Goa, the parties which are operating here to ensure that BJP wins".