As TMC crack travels to Delhi, Mamata looks for warmth in INDIA situationship: Decoding the two meets today | India News

Weeks after being swept from power in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee was seated in New Delhi for a meeting of Opposition INDIA bloc. Another meeting some distance away was busy splitting her party further, as cracks that appeared upon her assembly defeat have now travelled northwards to the national capital.She arrived for the INDIA meeting with nephew Abhishek Banerjee, the TMC's national general secretary who's been marked out by rebels as a chief reason for the party's loss and split. Neither spoke to the media when asked about a renewed unity push for the INDIA bloc, with which the TMC has had a political situationship so far.The former West Bengal CM was seen seated to the right of Congress president and bloc convener Mallikarjun Kharge. To Kharge's left was Rahul Gandhi.This visible warmth in a raging hot Delhi was seen just as Mamata's alleged role in “destroying” the INDIA bloc, three summers ago, was making headlines too. Old baggage resurfacesSanjay Jha, national working president of Bihar's JD(U), said in an interview that “two people destroyed the India Bloc alliance” in 2023. He named Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal. The AAP chief was not at the INDIA bloc meeting anyway, his party having attacked the Congress in the lead-up as they face off soon in Punjab state elections.Jha claimed a consensus had been reached that JD(U) supremo and the then Bihar CM Nitish Kumar would be the convener of INDIA bloc when it was formed pointedly for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.“But in the meeting, these two came in — probably as a planned move — and said there should be a Dalit convener, proposing (Mallikarjun) Kharge. This put the Congress on the backfoot (as it could not oppose its own leader). Nitish ji was never desperate to be the convener; he was bringing everyone onto one platform. But the move was sabotaged,” Jha told The Indian Express last week.“Regional parties felt that Congress only does politics in a few states and it doesn’t affect them much,” Jha further said. Mamata's party eventually did not share seats in Bengal, though the AAP and Congress did in Delhi.That was then.Mamata-led TMC's work with the bloc since has been formulaic: no truck in Bengal, some coordination in Parliament, with occasional friendly fire from both sides.Tale of two meetings, and Mamata's renewed commitmentIn recent days, though, Mamata asserted a renewed commitment to Opposition unity immediately after her 15-year reign in Bengal ended with the Centre's ruling BJP achieving its long-held ambition to rule the home state of Syama Prasad Mukherjee, the ideologue who founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951, the predecessor to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).State units of the Congress and Left parties reacted with immediate rejection.But Rahul Gandhi, who attacked the TMC during the election campaign, has not been so aggressive since, having returned to the nuance of keeping some unity at least at the national level.Mamata's own party stands visibly fractured back home, and the cracks were visible now at the national level too. A Rajya Sabha MP quit in the morning, and at least half a dozen of the TMC's Lok Sabha members met Bengal's BJP chief minister Suvendu Adhikari at a Union minister's home, around the same time as the INDIA meeting was on, not too far apart within the Lutyens' Zone of New Delhi.The TMC has 28 members in the Lok Sabha at present; the rebels would need a two-thirds bloc of 19 to avoid disqualification under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution. They claim to have that number.This follows a revolt in the state legislature, where nearly 60 of the TMC's 80 MLAs have backed expelled rebel Ritabrata Banerjee, who has become Leader of the Opposition over the official nominee.Senior party MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar claimed in Delhi after meeting Suvendu, “Nearly 20 TMC MPs, including me, have written to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla about our decision to support the NDA.” The TMC leadership did not immediately respond to the claims.‘If other parties support TMC…’TMC MP Saugata Roy, who has so far remained loyal to Mamata, said, “Our party is being targeted and attacked a lot. If other parties support the TMC, it will provide strength to us.”He noted, "When there was an attack on Abhishek Banerjee, Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi from the Congress condemned it."He also spoke of having got an offer to switch sides: “Yes, I got an offer (from the BJP) to join it. But I rejected it. I will stay in the party on whose symbol I won the election.”Meanwhile, the INDIA bloc meeting at the Constitution Club ended with a decision to meet more frequently and a set of five resolutions, including raising some immediate issues such as the exam-related mess.Kharge noted that the bloc had come into being almost exactly three years ago, and urged partners to carry the "spirit of unity" forward. Besides Rahul Gandhi, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, the RJD's Tejashwi Yadav, NCP(SP)'s Supriya Sule and Jammu and Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah attended, as did Mehbooba Mufti of J&K's PDP; Shiv Sena (UBT)'s Uddhav Thackeray joined virtually.Mamata returned in person after her assembly defeat inverted the 2024 Lok Sabha results, in which the TMC had won 29 of the state's 42 seats and the BJP 12. She had cited that outcome to justify going it alone in the state polls of 2026.After many twistsThat going-solo line defined her early ties with the INDIA bloc too. In January 2024, she said the TMC would contest the Lok Sabha polls in her state alone, and declared there was “no INDIA alliance in West Bengal”. She said she remained part of it nationally.By the end of that year, after PM Narendra Modi-led NDA retained power, she offered to lead the INDIA bloc herself. The TMC skipped some Congress-led protests in Parliament for a while, before coordinating again in recent Parliament sessions.After the big defeat at home, though, Banerjee appealed on Rabindra Jayanti for a joint platform against the new BJP government. State CPI(M) leaders rebuffed her with adjectives like “criminal, extortionist, corrupt, communal”, while the Congress's Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said she must first accept Rahul Gandhi's leadership.The bloc she has rejoined is itself strained after latest defeats of some constituents. Tamil Nadu's DMK boycotted Monday's meeting over the Congress's support to Vijay's TVK in Tamil Nadu; and the CPI(M) sent only one MP.