Bengal Battle: Congress eyes revival in West Bengal amid changing political landscape

A revival of the Congress in West Bengal, which has totally been pushed to the margins in recent years with the rise of Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, could begin from this Assembly election.

The Congress and the CPM-led Left parties, had fought the 2021 Assembly elections together to deal with Mamata’s rapidly spreading influence in the state. But neither party managed to win a single seat.

In this election, because of the changed political situation in the state with rising anti-incumbency sentiments against Mamata, an opportunity has surfaced that can give the Congress space to regain some of its lost ground.

The Congress was the dominant political force in West Bengal in the first decade of the post-Partition period. It formed a number of governments in the state until 1967. But its 10-year run came to an end when the Bangla Congress, a breakaway group of the party, in alliance with the CPM and other Left parties, formed the first United Front government in 1967.

It was dismissed in less than nine months as political unrest spread in the state in the wake of the Naxalbari movement. After a brief spell of President’s Rule, a second United Front was formed by Mukherjee and the Left parties in 1969 but it too, was dismissed after 13 months because of rising differences with the coalition and its failure to contain the violence and unrest in Bengal.

After another spell of central rule, a questionable election was held in 1972 and Siddhartha Shankar Ray became the Congress Chief Minister of West Bengal and served until 1977. A post-Emergency period saw a government formed by the CPM-led Left Front, which ruled for the next 34 years, until Mamata dislodged it.

But throughout the Left Front rule, the Congress remained the main Opposition party with a vote share ranging between 38 to 40 per cent. Much of that support has shifted to Mamata. But now the party is making a concerted effort to take it back.

The Congress has decided to contest in all the 294 seats in this Assembly election without forming an alliance with any other party. The strategy is to benefit from a possible third option from the current binary of TMC and BJP. The party thinks many voters do not want to choose between Mamata or the BJP, as is evident by the NOTA figures in the 2021 election.

Nearly 6.46 lakh voters did not vote for either of the two big parties. Though they also did not find the Congress-Left alliance as an option, the party thinks if it contested the election on its own without the left parties, it stood a better chance of winning some seats.

The party rank-and-file has shared its feedback with the Congress leadership that indicated that an alliance with the CPM-led left parties had spoiled the party’s chance in the past election as many voters continue to have negative opinions of the Left Front government that was in power in the state for over three decades. On the other hand, the violence and the infighting of Congress rule in the 1970s has more-or-less faded from people’s memory.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi held a series of big meetings in Malda and Murshidabad on Tuesday to exhort Congress workers to unite and put up a strong fight against both Mamata’s TMC and the BJP to pose the party as a viable third option.

With prominent state Congress leaders like Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in Murshidabad’s Baharampur and Mausum Noor, niece of ABA. Ghani Khan Choudhury, a legendary Congress leader from Malda, thinks there is a chance of regaining space in its former strongholds and win some seats in Murshidabad, Malda and Nadia.

But observers point out that Congress’s biggest enemy lies within its own ranks, as rivalry among its Congress leaders has often spoiled the party’s chance of putting on a good performance.

The question therefore remains: Can the party exorcise the devil within and unite to fight the enemy outside?