By Tirthankar Mitra
KOLKATA: The debacle of the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal was not at all unexpected. With only Malda (South) Lok Sabha constituency in Congress kitty out of 42 seats in the state, the Grand Old Party is a faint shadow of its former self in West Bengal. The reasons behind the retreat of Congress turning almost into a rout needs to be laid at the doors of its state and national leadership whose vacillation helped Trinamool Congress widen its support base at the expense of the Congress party.
The functioning of the state Congress unit in the 1990s when Mamata Banerjee, then a Kolkata (South) MP and heading the youth wing of the party launched successive agitations sans PCC nod against the CPI(M) -led Left Front government. The Congress’s credibility with the voters who supported it took a beating and then reached bottom of the barrel when Banerjee floated Trinamool Congress in 1998.
In successive elections, the electoral success of the fledgling breakaway TMC continued to rise and fall. But it emerged as the principal Opposition outfit in the state even as the UPA government continued to receive support from the Left. Maintaining friendly ties with the Left at the Centre while opposing it in West Bengal led to erosion of Congress’s credibility. But even when TMC entered into a coalition with it in 2011 assembly elections, Congress still retained some vestiges of a support base.
With it’s back to the wall, the Congress and Left Front read CPI(M) entered into an electoral alliance before 2016 Assembly elections. If it fetched both outfits handsome political dividend, it gave TMC an opportunity to go about the town propagating that the coalition was a pointer to the fact the Congress is the B-team of the CPI(M).
The TMC leadership went about successive elections basing their campaign on the charge that Congress being hands in glove with CPI(M). By doing so, it thinned both the influence as well as votes cast in favour of Congress nominees. Congress contested in only 12 constituencies out of 42 in West Bengal in 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The rest of the seats were allotted to Left Front indicating the disparity in areas of influence of the two INDIA coalition partners.
The voting percentage of Congress in West Bengal has dropped to 4.72 per cent in this election from 5.3 per cent in 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The indication of a dwindling voting percentage in Congress’s favour surfaced in 2021 Assembly when it failed to win in a single Assembly constituency. This time however, the analysis shows that in the 294 assembly segments under 42 Lok Sabha constituencies, the Congress got 11 seats, as against only one by the CPI(M), 90 by the BJP and 190 by the Trinamool Congress. In fact, the results show that the Congress still has some support base in three districts of North Bengal.
Playing second fiddle to Trinamool leadership read Mamata Banerjee had been an unenviable experience for the Congress leaders when they had cobbled together a coalition in 2011 Assembly elections to end the 34 year long Left Front regime. But as Congress ministers of the TMC-Congress coalition Cabinet assumed office they found their wings clipped.
The political honeymoon was short-lived and the Congress ministers soon resigned. With TMC enjoying a majority, the government did not collapse but both the parties reached started to act as rivals TMC was in the offensive. As a result many Congress leaders and grass roots workers joined TMC. Even in state Congress, there were leaders who wanted to align with the TMC for getting safe seats, but the dominant section led by the state president Adhir Choudhury stuck to the position that any alliance with TMC will lead to the complete erosion of the Congress base. The high command had to endorse this stand of Adhir despite their own reservations.
Behrampore MP and PCC chief Adhir Ranjan Choudhury himself was a stumbling block to any proximity to TMC leadership .led by Mamata. Their political difference descended almost to a personal level arising from factional feud from their days in the state Congress. Choudhury’s verbal salvoes targeted at Banerjee continued even during the election campaign. It earned him a rap on the knuckles from Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge but failed to check his vitriolic criticism of the TMC chief.
Earlier, Choudhury is learnt to have conveyed to Congress chief Kharge and other senior AICC leaders that only a change of state Congress chief would trigger a cordial political relation with the TMC and it’s supremo. But the national leadership of his party chose not to change on the eve of the elections knowing well it would demoralise the rank and file.
But the national Congress leadership expressed it’s displeasure at the PCC chief’s words and deeds. Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi campaigned for Khan Choudhury at Malda(South) but skipped a rally at Behrampore though Adhir’s performance as leader of Congress Parliamentary Party in the Lok Sabha was commendable.. AS a five time Lok Sabha member from Berhampore, he also did lot of work in his area.
Both Choudhury and other Congress contestants read the writing on the wall. The national leadership seeks a working relations with the TMC supremo. This was apparent as te top Congress leaders did not attend any rally in Behrampore. The leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha, was left to fend for himself.
Lok Sabha elections are won and lost on the strength of the votes polled in the Assembly segments constituting the parliamentary constituencies. All the assembly segments including Behrampore were sans a Congress legislator leaving Choudhury, a five time MP sans any support to swing an electoral battle which was a desperate one even in 2019 elections. (IPA Service)
