Mamata Banerjee on Monday told her party MLAs that the Delhi election outcome will have no impact on the Bengal Assembly elections scheduled to be held next year.
“We will come to power with two-third majority on our own. Congress does not have anything here. We will win on our own,” Mamata told the Trinamul lawmakers during an internal meeting ahead of the Assembly budget session.
The BJP returned to power in Delhi after 27 years, dislodging the AAP government and inflicting defeat on some of the party’s tallest leaders including former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.
About her two partners in the INDI alliance, sources said the chief minister held the view that had the two parties worked in tandem the results would have been different.
“Didi feels Congress getting nearly 5 per cent votes had an impact on the outcome,” said a Trinamul legislator from Nadia district. “Didi said, had the Congress shown some flexibility and reached an electoral understanding with the AAP the results would have been different.
“She also said that in Haryana, too, AAP did not support the Congress. She believes the BJP would not have returned to power in Haryana had the two alliance partners contested together.”
The MLA said the chief minister does not consider the same situation will play out in Bengal as the other opposition parties do not have the organisational strength to meet the BJP’s challenge elsewhere like the Trinamul does.
Though Mamata has been a part of the INDI alliance since the opposition parties clubbed together a pre-poll arrangement, in Bengal the coalition never took shape in the Lok Sabha polls unlike in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, where the partners – Congress, SP in UP and Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP) in Maharashtra – had reached an understanding and worked well on the ground that helped restrict the BJP to 240.
Having learnt its lessons from the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP reversed its electoral fortunes in both the states in the Assembly polls and gained lost ground to return to power.
In Haryana, both the Congress and the BJP had won an equal five seats in 2024 Lok Sabha polls, while the BJP in the previous two elections had made a clean sweep. In the Assembly polls this year, the BJP returned to power winning 48 of the 90 seats, while the Congress could win only 37.
In Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha polls, the Opposition MVA had won 30 of the 48 seats, with the Congress winning the maximum 13 seats. In the Assembly polls held in November, the BJP alone won 132 seats, while the Congress fared its worst at 16.
Mamata has also instructed the MLAs to work with the old and new party workers and increase interaction with the people in their respective constituencies as the elections were little over a year away.
Within the Trinamul a debate has been raging over the age issue as the party’s general secretary and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee is in favour of a retirement age for politicians, while Mamata is not ready to let go of the party’s old guard.
Though Abhishek had submitted his recommendations for changes within the organisation, Mamata has asked the MLAs to submit their recommendations on changes in the party’s students and youth wing within 15 days to state minister Aroop Biswas.
