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Mahajot plan in West Bengal fizzles out

Zakia Maryam in Calcutta

It is now official. With just a day to go for filing of nominations for next month's civic elections in West Bengal, the much-hyped mahajot (grand alliance) has fizzled out even before it could see the light of day.

While Trinamul Congress leaders are criticising the Congress high command for opposing the Bharatiya Janata Party's inclusion in the alliance, Congress politicians see the failure of the mahajot as a triumph of Sonia Gandhi's leadership.

Subrata Mukherjee, a Congress legislator who recently switched over to the Trinamul, told rediff.com, "It's unfortunate that mahajot will not take place in West Bengal, at least not during the municipal elections. It was ridiculous of the Congress high command to stick to its reservations about the BJP. The Delhi leaders' confusing stand on the issue has proved our undoing."

Mukherjee said that if the Congress remained adamant and did not show some flexibility in its approach towards the BJP, it would mar the prospects of a mahajot even for next year's assembly election.

But Congress politicians are now singing Gandhi's praises. They think she has shown exemplary leadership skills in preventing a split in the state unit of the party without compromising its secular ideals.

Saugata Roy, West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee vice-president, said, "Even though I have been opposing the idea of an electoral adjustment with the communal BJP, I was in favour of a tie-up with Mamata Banerjee to fight the Left forces. I feel that a unified Congress-Trinamul combine would have been able to repeat the performance of the 1995 civic polls when we had won many municipal boards."

But Roy said Gandhi had shown "immense maturity" in handling the crisis and succeeded in keeping her flock together without giving in to the "unreasonable" demands of the rebels.

WBPCC chief A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury, who met the Congress president in New Delhi on Monday, failed to convince the national leadership to join the alliance with the BJP. Khan Chowdhury's failure stemmed from the growing revolt by his own lieutenants in his own constituency, Malda. Many Congress councillors from Old Malda town and English Bazaar bluntly refused to vacate their seats for either the BJP or the Trinamul. This was a big blow to the veteran politician, who had telephoned Trinamul chief Banerjee on Saturday and assured her that despite opposition from the high command, he would not field any candidates against the BJP in Malda.

On Sunday, enraged Congress supporters heckled a senior politician at a state-level meeting of the Qaumi Tanzeem in Calcutta for proposing a resolution advocating a tie-up with the saffron brigade. The supporters did not spare even Sultan Ahmed, WBPCC general secretary, for his closeness to the rebel camp. Speakers, mostly Muslims, were scathing in their attacks on Ahmed for his softness on the BJP.

Fearing a possible revolt in the party's Muslim support base, Congress bigwigs are now in no mood to risk their poll prospects merely to toe Banerjee's line.

For the Trinamul chief, who not so long ago successfully masterminded large-scale cross-voting to ensure the victory of her candidate in the biennial Rajya Sabha election, the recent developments have come as a rude shock. Political analysts now believe the Trinamul-BJP combine may not be able to match up to the Left Front.

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