Change of guard in the Congress

Published : Oct 10, 2018 12:30 IST

Somendra Nath Mitra  (right) after his appointment as West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee president on September 21.

Somendra Nath Mitra (right) after his appointment as West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee president on September 21.

The unceremonious removal of West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee (WBPCC) president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and the installation of former Trinamool Congress MP Somendra Nath Mitra in his place have sparked off speculations about the party’s electoral strategy in West Bengal for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

The decision of the party’s central leadership to replace the rigidly anti-Trinamool Chowdhury with the apparently more flexible Mitra is perceived in certain political circles as keeping a channel for dialogue open with the Trinamool in case the need for an electoral or post-election understanding arises.

Mitra, a veteran Congress leader, joined the Trinamool in 2008 and became a Lok Sabha MP before returning to the Congress fold in 2014. While acknowledging that the Congress had suffered heavily at the hands of the Trinamool, the new WBPCC president said that the decision for any kind of alliance with any party would ultimately be taken at the national level. He said: “We have to keep both the short-term and the long-term perspectives in mind.” Earlier, Mitra had said that if the Congress was looking to make short-term gains, it should ally itself with the Trinamool; however, if it was looking at a long-term strategy, then it should forge ties with the Left. This is Mitra’s second stint as WBPCC president. Earlier he had held the post from 1992 to 1998.

Chowdhury, who has been made chairman of the Congress Campaign Committee after his removal, made it clear that he was not about to change his stand vis-a-vis the Trinamool Congress. “Today the Congress is a persecuted party—persecuted by the Trinamool. How can the persecutor and the persecuted be together?” he asked Frontline.

 

Right from the inception of the Trinamool, when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee broke away from the Congress in 1998, the party’s growth has come at the expense of the Congress. In 2009, when the two parties forged an understanding, albeit a rocky one, for the Lok Sabha election, after the CPI(M) withdrew its support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre, and later in 2011, when the two bickering allies joined forces to overthrow the 34-year-old CPI(M)-led Left Front government in West Bengal, the Congress had to swallow its pride and accept the humiliating conditions laid down by the Trinamool in the seat-sharing arrangements. In 2012, Mamata Banerjee quit the UPA and the relationship between her party and the Congress continued to worsen.

With the Trinamool’s political position in the State getting stronger and the attacks on Congress and Left Front workers not abating, the once-bitter enemies, CPI(M) and the Congress, had to turn to each other to take on the might of the ruling party in the 2016 elections. Chowdhury, one of the chief architects of the alliance, told Frontline then that the main reason for the seat-sharing arrangement between the two parties was survival: “Otherwise the opposition will be obliterated from Bengal,” he said.

However, the Congress-Left seat adjustment was never properly cemented and their failure to dislodge the Mamata Banerjee government came as no big surprise. The alliance fell apart soon after the 2016 election and the subsequent byelections saw both the parties losing further political ground to the Trinamool. “If the Congress-Left tie-up had worked, the Bharatiya Janata Party would not have been able to occupy the political space it does today,” said Chowdhury. He still believes that the only way to take on the BJP and the Trinamool together is for the Left and the Congress to come to a political understanding in the State. “It is a fact that the vote share of the Left parties is dwindling, but they cannot still be written off,” he said. However, a veil of uncertainty has now fallen over the prospects of a Congress-Left alliance, as new windows of possibilities have apparently opened. “For the Congress high command now, it is not about Adhir Chowdhury’s stand or Somen Mitra’s policies, it is all a matter of numbers,” said a Trinamool source.

A few Congress leaders admitted that the decision over the issue of an “understanding” is now in flux. “Nothing is impossible in politics. One cannot say with certainty that the Congress will tie up with the Trinamool, nor can one say that the Left and the Congress will not come together again,” a Congress MLA told Frontline. In spite of what appears to be evident, most Congress leaders insist that the change of guard at the helm had little to do with opening a channel with the Trinamool; rather, it was a routine reshuffle following Rahul Gandhi’s ascension to the post of All India Congress Committee (AICC) president. There was also a sizeable section in the WBPCC that was not happy with Chowdhury’s autocratic style of functioning. “This change of guard is for a collective leadership where senior party leaders will lead it to the 2019 elections, rather than one single individual’s dictates,” a senior Congress source told Frontline.

But the manner in which Chowdhury was removed has left many party workers unhappy. “It is the AICC’s prerogative to decide who will be the president of the party, but party workers feel that the decision could have been taken after the 2019 elections. Adhir Chowdhury had after all maintained a sustained attack on the Trinamool Congress government,” said Manoj Chakraborty, Congress chief whip in the West Bengal Assembly.

 

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