A crystal ball gaze: Mamata & the Prime Minister’s chair

Subhrangshu Gupta

At this stage, it is too early to predict the political future of a person after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, especially if the person is West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. But there is no harm in nursing such an ambition if a young party MP and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee is to be believed.

Elevated as the president of the Trinamool Congress’ youth wing, Abhishek, at a public meeting recently, announced that Mamata would be the next Prime Minister.

“Bengal had given to the country Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore and President Pranab Mukherjee. The state is soon going to give it a new PM after the polls,” Abhikesh had said.

Mamata has not expressed any such desire publicly so far. She tweeted that after the 2016 Assembly polls, the TMC would be once again in power with vast majority. This stands in contrast to her bid for the top job last year.

On the eve of the last Lok Sabha polls, Mamata was seen staking claim as the PM candidate countering the BJP’s Narendra Modi. Accordingly, her party men also openly campaigned for her. Some of the close and trustworthy leaders were sent as emissaries to meet leaders of different non-BJP and non-Congress parties to garner support for her. The then party’s all India secretary Mukul Roy, who has since fallen out of favour, went to Tamil Nadu to meet AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa.

Roy also met RJD’s Lalu Prasad, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, BSP’s Mayawati and other parties’ leaders in Delhi. He also reached out to AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal and social activist Anna Hazare for support. Around the time, Mamata’s mentor and noted litterateur Mahasweta Devi issued a signed statement in Kolkata endorsing her for the PM’s post. Seeking to add mass support behind this quest, the Trinamool Congress arranged a public meeting at Delhi’s historic Ram Lila Maidan with two party MPs Derek O’Brien and Sukhendu Bikash Roy tasked to organise it.

The plan included inviting Hazare and making him publicly endorse her candidature for the top political post in the country, but that never happened. While Hazare preferred to stay away, Mamata’s calculation came a naught as reports of empty chairs at the sprawling maidan was carried extensively.