Trinamool’s Signature Event In Kolkata Tomorrow Won’t Mask Another Setback To Mamata Banerjee’s ‘National’ Ambitions

The Trinamool’s signature event--its annual Martyrs’ Day rally--tomorrow (Thursday) will be a mammoth affair with lakhs of party supporters from all over the state expected to attend the party’s mega ‘show of strength’.

But the jamboree, and the expected fiery speeches by party chief Mamata Banerjee as well as her lieutenants, will not be enough to play down yet another setback to Banerjee’s ambition to play a major role on the national stage.

The setback will come in the form of the defeat of former Trinamool national vice-president, Yashwant Sinha, in the Presidential elections. The results of the elections, held Monday, will be announced Thursday.

Sinha, the joint opposition candidate whose name was proposed by Mamata Banerjee, is set for a defeat with even many non-NDA parties voting for the NDA nominee Droupadi Murmu.

As a result, Sinha--he resigned as the Trinamool national vice-president before filing his nomination papers for the Presidential polls--is set to face a humiliating defeat.

Among the major non-NDA parties that voted for Murmu are the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), the YSRCP and the Shiv Sena (including that party’s rump led by Uddhav Thackeray). In addition to that, many MLAs and MPs belonging to parties that officially declared their support for Sinha are suspected to have cross-voted in favour of Murmu.

That is why Sinha will get fewer votes than what he would have otherwise expected. There was never any doubt that he would lose, but the scale of his defeat will be a dishonourable one.

However, much more than the defeat being a personal loss for Sinha, it will represent a snub to Mamata Banerjee.

That’s because she invested a lot of political capital in getting the non-NDA parties to come together and field a joint candidate for the Presidential polls. Banerjee wrote to leaders of 22 non-NDA parties--including, cheekily, to Sonia Gandhi--in early June inviting them to a meeting she convened in New Delhi on June 15 to discuss names for the President’s post and finalise a strategy for the polls.

Mamata Banerjee’s sole purpose of taking the lead in getting all Opposition parties on board for the Presidential polls was to emerge as the principal figure in the anti-BJP camp. Her bid to upstage the Congress, which had planned a similar conclave of Opposition parties on the same date, made her intentions abundantly clear.

The Trinamool chief proposed the name of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) patriarch Sharad Pawar as the joint Opposition candidate. But she did so without the requisite homework and was left with egg on her face when Pawar refused despite Banerjee’s many entreaties.

She then suggested the names of National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah and former Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi. Both turned down the offers, and Banerjee, running out of options, zeroed in on her own party vice president Yashwant Sinha.

Sinha was propped up by Banerjee with a lot of fanfare. And the Trinamool chief even claimed--by turning a blind eye to stark ground realities--that Sinha would win the Presidential polls and she would have her nominee in the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

By taking the lead in the whole exercise of deciding on a joint Opposition nominee for the President’s post, Mamata Banerjee once again tried to emerge as the principal leader in the anti-BJP camp. That is part of her long-cherished desire to play a major role in national politics.

Banerjee has, for many years, harboured ambitions of occupying the Prime Minister’s post. Or at least being a king-maker and being the real power behind the throne.

In the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, she was confident that the results would throw up a hung Lok Sabha with neither the NDA, nor the UPA, winning a majority and that would pave the way for the ‘Third Front’ to form the government, maybe with outside support of the Congress and some other parties.

So confident was Mamata Banerjee that she even told her close lieutenants that they would have to manage Bengal because she would play a major role (read: become the PM) in New Delhi!

“Mamata Banerjee’s political calculation has been that if she manages to position herself as the principal figure in the ‘Third Front’, she would have a strong claim to the PM’s post if this front forms the government at the Centre,” political analyst Ranabir Roychowdhury told Swarajya.

Banerjee’s ‘national ambitions’ received a boost with her party posting a spectacular victory in the 2021 Assembly polls in Bengal. Buoyed by this success, she started dreaming of spreading her wings beyond Bengal.

Banerjee campaigned hard in Goa and even projected that the Trinamool would form the government in the coastal state after the Assembly elections in February this year. The Trinamool, as it turned out, failed to win even one seat and all its candidates lost their security deposits.

The Trinamool has been trying its utmost to gain a toehold in Tripura, but has failed to do so. The results of the November 2021 civic polls in the northeastern state, which the BJP swept, and the byelections to four Assembly seats proved to be reminders to the Trinamool that it has little traction in the rest of the country.

But Banerjee’s ‘never say die’ attitude saw her making another major attempt to pitchfork herself onto the national stage by taking the lead to forge a consensus among Opposition parties for the Presidential polls.

The Trinamool chief spent many hours calling up and confabulating with Opposition leaders and, all through, tried to project herself as the principal persona in the anti-BJP camp.

But Sinha’s impending defeat, by a significantly larger margin than what was expected, will serve as yet another wake-up call for Mamata Banerjee and her party. That the wake-up call will come on the day that the Trinamool will hold its marquee event--the most important in its annual calendar--in Kolkata is also significant.

Banerjee, and all her party leaders who will speak before her, are expected to rail and rant against the BJP and Prime Minister Modi. They will predict the BJP’s defeat in 2024 and many Trinamool leaders will project Didi as the next PM of the country, to wild cheers from the lakhs of Trinamool supporters and activists.

But Banerjee and her lieutenants cannot wish away the shadow of Yashwant Sinha’s defeat in the Presidential elections that will hang over tomorrow’s jamboree. They will not be able to brush away the reality-check that the defeat will serve on them when they congregate on the huge stage set up on a buddy thoroughfare in Kolkata’s central business district.

Also read:

-Apprehensive of annoying tribals, Mamata Banerjee asks opposition Prez pick Yashwant Sinha to keep away from Bengal

-How Mamata Banerjee’s bid to upstage Congress and grab leadership role has vitiated opposition attempt to forge consensus over presidential candidate