Why Mamata Banerjee’s Quest To Take Trinamool Beyond Bengal’s Borders Can Erode Her Own Pole Position Within Party

Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee’s quest to expand her party’s footprints beyond Bengal’s borders may have an adverse impact on her prime position within the party she founded.

Her spectacular win in the Bengal Assembly polls earlier this year that punctured the BJP’s ambitions of unseating her from power in the state fuelled her ‘national’ ambitions. Egged on by political strategist Prashant Kishor, Mamata Banerjee started positioning herself as the Prime Minister-in-waiting.

Banerjee assumed that since she effectively thwarted the BJP’s grand design of coming to power in Bengal and delivered a drubbing to the saffron party in her state, she would emerge as the primary face of a broad anti-BJP coalition at the national level. But for that to happen, she rightly assumed that she would have to take her party beyond Bengal and make it a pan-India party.

However, doing so could jeopardize her prime position within her own party. That’s because outside Bengal, she holds little appeal. Save for Tripura, and that too to a limited extent, Mamata Banerjee is not a vote catcher and her electoral campaigns in other states will not get the Trinamool any votes in those states. That is why she is roping in senior leaders from other parties into the Trinamool and projecting them as the face of her party in those respective states. Thus, while Luizinho Faleiro is the face of the Trinamool in Goa, Mukul Sangma is the party’s new face in Meghalaya.

Both Faleiro and Sangma were chief ministers of their respective states. The Trinamool will definitely contest the elections in these two states--February 2022 in Goa and a year later in Meghalaya--with Faleiro and Sangma as its chief ministerial candidates.

And whatever success that brings for the Trinamool will be mainly due to Faleiro in Goa and Sangma in Meghalaya. And, to a lesser extent, other local Trinamool leaders (defectors from other parties) in these two states. Banerjee, for sure, will have no claim to whatever success her party registers in those two states, or any other state for that matter.

Banerjee is eyeing some other states that go to the polls before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Her game plan is to put on a respectable show in those states. That, she hopes, will accord to her a pan-India status and boost her chances of emerging as the leader of an anti-BJP coalition.

But in those states, too, Mamata Banerjee will have to induct senior leaders from other parties if she wants her party to make a mark. Without leaders of stature in the other states, the Trinamool will not be able to make even a minor dent.

That was amply demonstrated in the municipal polls in Tripura recently; the Trinamool won one of the 222 seats where elections were held. The BJP won 217 of those seats.

The Trinamool, despite investing huge resources in Tripura and sending a galaxy of its top leaders to that state, performed so miserably because it could not induct a leader of any stature in that state. The senior most leader of the Trinamool in that northeastern state is Subal Bhowmick, a political itinerant who had even become a brahmachari once, and who has not won even a municipal election in the recent past.

Thus, the Trinamool needs to organise defection of senior leaders from other parties if it has to establish a presence in other states.

Hence, those leaders are most unlikely to accord her the primacy that she is used to from Bengal’s Trinamool leaders. Both Faleiro and Sangma have been chief ministers in their own right and will not put up with Banerjee's autocratic ways once the Assembly elections in their respective states are over.

They, and the senior politicians in some other states who may join the Trinamool in the months to come, wouldn't have been drawn to Mamata Banerjee's party out of any attraction towards its non-existent ideology or out of any love and respect for Banerjee. Sheer political convenience and their personal political ambitions would have made them join the Trinamool. Faleiro, who was quite left out in the cold by the Congress, left that party and joined the Trinamool to remain politically relevant in Goa.

Sangma was incensed over being sidelined by the Congress 'high command' in his state and joined the Trinamool out of vengeance. He wants to teach the party a lesson in Meghalaya by relegating it to the margins in that state.

And whatever may be the performance of the Trinamool in those states, Mamata Banerjee would have played no part in it. She is not a vote-catcher in any state except Bengal.

Thus, Faleiro, Sangma and other political leaders in states outside Bengal who have joined (and may join) the Trinamool will never defer to Mamata Banerjee. Unlike Trinamool leaders in Bengal, they would not be depending even marginally on Mamata to get votes.

In Bengal, everyone in the Trinamool depends on their party chief to ensure their success at the hustings. They know that no matter how high up they are in the Trinamool hierarchy, without Banerjee, they will not be able to win even a panchayat or municipal poll.

That is why they put up with Mamata Banerjee's autocratic and tyrannical ways and the frequent snubs and dressing-downs they (including even the very senior cabinet ministers) receive from her.

But Trinamool leaders in other states will have no need to do so. Banerjee, given her nature, will expect them to be subservient and slavish and that will pitch them against her.

And that will trigger a lot of churning in the Trinamool that could ultimately erode Mamata Banerjee's pole position in the party.

Banerjee’s quest to take her party beyond Bengal may cost her dear.