From the first meeting of the INDIA bloc, the CPI(M) made it clear that it would be unwilling to accommodate the TMC in West Bengal. TMC supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also said her party would not ally with the Left party. But, between the Congress and the TMC, there was still a slim chance of seat-sharing. However, an agreement failed to materialise and, during Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, Mamata announced the TMC would take on the BJP alone.
On Sunday, while announcing candidates’ names in all 42 seats, Mamata assured the party would put up a strong fight against the Congress and the CPI(M) too. She also said the TMC would name a candidate in Meghalaya.
“We asked the Congress to contest two seats in West Bengal. They did not agree and asked for more. However, they were not ready to give us a single seat outside West Bengal. Why would we spare them in West Bengal?” a senior TMC leader said of the seat-sharing negotiations.
Mamata also criticised the Congress state unit and the CPI(M) for not softening their stance against an alliance with the TMC. “In Bengal we will fight alone. The reason is that we were in favour of the alliance, but the Congress was not. The alliance happened between the CPI(M) and the Congress to facilitate the BJP. I don’t support the CPIM or the BJP,” Mamata said.
In Baharampur, currently held by Congress MP and state unit chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the TMC has fielded former India cricketer Yusuf Pathan in the hopes of flipping the seat with a high-profile Muslim face. “Mamata thinks Adhir is the main barrier between the TMC and Congress alliance in West Bengal. That is why the leadership fielded a strong contender against Adhir in Baharampur,” a senior TMC leader said.
Not only in Baharampur, the TMC has also announced a prominent Muslim candidate for Maldaha Dakshin with Shahnawaz Ali Raihan, a scholar from Oxford University. The seat is currently held by four-time Congress MP Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury and is the grand old party’s only other Lok Sabha seat in Bengal.
In the CPI(M)’s bastion of Jadavpur, the TMC has opted for actor-turned-politician Saayoni Ghosh as the replacement for Mimi Chakraborty, the seat’s former MP who resigned last month. In 2019, though, the CPI(M) was placed third in Jadavpur.
The Congress and Left have flayed the TMC’s list. Congress general secretary for communications Jairam Ramesh criticised the TMC for announcing all 42 candidates while keeping the door open for future negotiations. “We have always said that … there should be no unilateral announcement of the seats, we should do it collectively together… I don’t know what pressure was there on the TMC but as far as we are concerned, we want to strengthen the INDIA alliance in West Bengal,” he said.
Reacting to the TMC’s announcement of Pathan as his competitor, Adhir said, “Anybody can be a candidate in India. However, the TMC does not believe in their local leader. That is why they brought candidates from outside.” Pathan is from Gujarat but played for the Kolkata Knight Riders IPL team.
CPI(M) leader and former MLA Sujan Chakraborty, alleging collusion between the TMC and the BJP, claimed that Mamata announced the candidates “after consultation with the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”
On Pathan’s nomination from Baharampur, TMC Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy said, “As soon as Yusuf Pathan’s name was announced as a TMC candidate, Adhir went into panic mode.”