Mamata Banerjee on Monday attacked the CPM while not naming the Congress even once, prompting Trinamool insiders to say that she might have gone soft on her INDIA bloc partner with an eye on the 2026 Assembly polls.
“We will have khela again.... This time we must hit a six and bowl out the BJP. We must send CPM into maha-shunya (oblivion),” Mamata thundered during her speech at the Martyrs’ Day event in Calcutta’s Esplanade.
The Bengal Congress did not make much of Mamata’s silence on the party. “Which political party the leader of a political party names cannot be determined by us. Trinamool has its own agenda,” state Congress president Subhankar Sarkar told The Telegraph and reaffirmed the party would continue to fight Mamata.
Trinamool insiders said Mamata’s “softening of stance”, if any, towards the Bengal Congress could be rooted in the internal development of India’s grand old party. After Mamata’s bête noire Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was removed as state Congress president and Sarkar took over, Mamata saw the possibility of a changed equation under the new chief, a Trinamool leader said.
Asked why Mamata did not name the Congress, even though she hinted at the BJP-CPM-Congress trio as “Ram-Bam-Shyam/Jagai-Madhai-Gadai” to insinuate they were cut from the same cloth when it came to Trinamool-bashing, several leaders of her party said she was aware that Sarkar was not a hardliner like Chowdhury when it came
to Trinamool.
“Who knows, equations with the Congress might change in 2026 unlike 2024,” a Trinamool leader said.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, when seat-sharing talks were on between the Trinamool and the Congress in Bengal and leaders like Jairam Ramesh and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge were keen to strike a deal with Mamata despite Chowdhury’s resistance, she announced the names of 42 Trinamool Lok Sabha candidates and slammed the door on the Congress.
Kharge had said: “Our doors are always open.” However, Trinamool stayed unwilling because of Chowdhury. “They should first showcause Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury or throw him out,” Trinamool’s Jay Prakash Majumdar had said.
With Sarkar at the helm, Mamata might not want to rub the Congress the wrong way, sources said.
What Sarkar told The Telegraph on the party’s stance vis-à-vis Mamata’s speech lacked Chowdhury’s belligerence.
“When the issue is Bengal’s deprivation by the Centre, we are with the state government. But when it comes to the issue of attacks on Bengali-speaking people in BJP-ruled states, we want to remind Mamata Banerjee that she had supported BJP’s vice-presidential candidate Jagdeep Dhankhar. I would add that her speech was disappointing. People wanted to hear about the status of investigations into the deaths of Abhaya, Tamanna Khatun and the Kasba law college rape survivor. She said nothing. She did not utter a word about shouldering responsibility for the poor state of education,” Sarkar said.
While refraining from attacking the Congress, Mamata slammed the CPM and went on to accuse the Left party of introducing the cut-money culture. “Who is the biggest taker of cut money? The CPM showed the way, and now the BJP is following it,” Mamata said.
She went on to accuse the CPM of tacit understanding with the BJP.
“The CPM did so many scams, yet none of them were arrested. Is that even possible without being in understanding with the BJP?”
Hitting back at the chief minister, CPM state secretary Md Salim said: “She weaves a web of lies and gets trapped in it. We are aware Trinamool spends crores on their IT cell and paid social media accounts — some fake — to spread falsehood.... While Modi is killing democracy in the country and Mamata is doing it in Bengal.... BJP spends the most on IT and Trinamool comes second. Now, she is accusing the CPM. This goes to show she is afraid.”
Salim added: “When the BJP is trying to disenfranchise people through intensive revision of the electoral roll, Mamata has jumped in to save (Narendra) Modi. She has said that during the CPM rule, people were unable to vote. Then how did Subrata Mukherjee become a Trinamool mayor of Calcutta during Left rule? She herself became an MP during Left rule. If people couldn’t vote, how did she become an MP? This shows the kind of lies she manufactures.”