Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday accused the Left and the BJP of forming an alliance against the Trinamul Congress in Bengal and compared it with the purported understanding that the Congress and the Left had when the Left was in power in the state.
“Now the CPM and the BJP have formed the Ram-Bam pact (Ram represents BJP and Bam represents Left). It is just like the concordance between the CPM and the Congress in Bengal earlier. We used to say that the alliance between them was like a watermelon, green outside and red inside,” Mamata said while addressing a Trinamul meet at Nazrul Manch in Calcutta.
“We used to say that the Congress is the B-team of the CPM in Bengal. Presently, the Congress is working as the B-team of the BJP and the C-team of the CPM,” she added.
Mamata explained why she had formed Trinamul by splitting the Congress in 1998.
“There were so many people who advised us not to form a separate party as it would be tough to survive. However, we did not listen to them as we tolerated this (alliance) for a long time. Some used to think that the CPM era would be ended either today or tomorrow (by the Congress) but we found out that it was a watermelon,” said Mamata.
According to a source, Mamata’s attack on the alleged BJP-CPM alliance is significant at a time when there are reports that the bellwether among the Left parties is gaining in strength in some parts of Bengal.
“In recent months, the CPM is showing signs of revival and a lot of people even in rural pockets are participating in their political activities. So, it was the right time to remind people how the BJP and the CPM were working on the same track against our party,” said a Trinamul leader.
In elections to a few cooperatives, an unofficial alliance of the BJP and the CPM had defeated Trinamul in districts like East Midnapore. On social media, some pictures of CPM and BJP workers together in a rally at a village in Hooghly district went viral.
A section of Trinamul leaders thinks that the CPM and the BJP would have an unofficial alliance at the grassroots in several parts of the state in panchayat polls.
“We should not forget how the CPM votes got shifted to the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Our leader cautioned the grassroots workers,” said a Trinamul leader in Purulia.
After blaming the CPM for having an unofficial truck with the BJP, Mamata took care to explain the context of her past alliance with the BJP, especially Trinamul’s participation in the BJP-led NDA government in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.
“They (BJP, CPM and Congress) can’t fight with their own ideologies. What we did earlier, we made it clear to the people. But we never worked for the BJP directly as we can’t follow their ideology,” the Trinamul chairperson said.
After Mamata’s attack, the BJP, Congress and the CPM took potshots at her.
“For the first time, she admitted that she had broken the Congress. We have said this repeatedly while she kept denying it,” said Congress veteran Pradip Bhattacharya.
“Everyone knows that it is her party which is hand in glove with the BJP. This is why the Saradha and Narada investigations were brushed under the carpet. Whatever allegations she made against us were complete lies,” said CPM leader Samik Lahiri.
The BJP claimed Mamata couldn’t be a BJP worker as she always belonged to a Congress family. “She must remember that during the birth of Trinamul, it was BJP stalwarts like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, who stood by her,” said BJP spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya.