Why Rahul Gandhi has asked ‘some in the Congress’ to not ‘gloat about TMC’s loss’

We explain what prompted Gandhi’s rebuke, and the tensions that have brewed within the INDIA bloc — especially between the Congress and the TMC in Bengal, and even with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu.

Why some Congress supporters celebrated TMC’s loss

As it became clear on Monday that the Trinamool was losing to the BJP, some sections of Congress supporters and even social media accounts aligned with the party started celebrating its loss. This setback for a state-based party was interpreted as a chance for the Congress to not only reassert its primacy within the INDIA bloc, but also attempt a resurgence in states where the party had once been dominant before losing ground to regional forces.

But Gandhi appeared to suggest that such celebrations were out of place given the current political climate, stressing the need for the Opposition to avoid being bogged down by internal rivalries in the face of a dominant BJP.

“Some in the Congress, and others, are gloating about TMC’s loss. They need to understand this clearly — the theft of Assam and Bengal’s mandate is a big step forward by the BJP in its mission to destroy Indian democracy. Put petty politics aside. This is not about one party or another. This is about (India),” he said in a post on X.

Bengal blues

Tensions between the Congress and the TMC are not new. The Trinamool itself began as a breakaway faction of the Congress when Mamata Banerjee decided to part ways with the party’s West Bengal state unit in 1998 to establish her own party in 1998. What started as a strident opposition to the then-entrenched Left Front regime in the state finally secured power in 2011, displacing 34 years of Communist rule.

Outgoing West Bengal CM and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee with party MP Abhishek Banerjee. (PTI)

In terms of Bengal’s political sphere, the Congress has constantly deliberated over three possible choices to consolidate its space: whether it should go it alone, whether it should ally with the Trinamool, or whether it should ally with the Left. Since 1977, the last time a Congress government was in power in the state, the party has tried all three options with little or no electoral success.

Although the Trinamool was a founding partner of the INDIA bloc, it decided to contest all of West Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats alone in the 2024 general election following differences with the Congress and the Left parties over seat-sharing. The TMC ended up winning 29 seats whereas the Congress won just one. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who was then Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, lost from Baharampur after five consecutive terms (1999-2024) to TMC’s Yusuf Pathan.

Since then, relations between the two parties have fluctuated. Differences have emerged over Trinamool’s reluctance to support Gandhi’s charges of “vote chori (stealing)” against the BJP over adverse Assembly election results in various states or his constant targeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his alleged ties to billionaire Gautam Adani.

Recently, however, the two parties had shown floor-level coordination in Parliament over their opposition to the 131st Constitutional Amendment Bill, which aimed to tweak the women’s reservation law as part of a three-Bill delimitation package.

Even in the impeachment notices against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar in the run-up to the West Bengal Assembly election, the Trinamool had initiated the process by submitting two notices in Parliament, which received support from other Opposition parties including the Congress.

During the Bengal election campaign, however, Gandhi had tried to project his party as a possible alternative by targeting both the Trinamool and the BJP. “The TMC has broken all records of corruption in Bengal… The people of Bengal are stuck between the hatred-spreading BJP and anti-people TMC,” he had said in a rally last month.

TVK or DMK: Tie-up dilemma

At the time of writing, the Congress appears to be actively considering extending support to the Vijay-led Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), which has emerged as the single largest party in the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly election with 108 seats out of the state’s total 234. But until the results, the TVK had emerged as the only major point of possible rupture in what had otherwise been a mostly steadfast alliance between the Congress and the DMK.

Over the past two decades or so, the two parties have contested most elections nationally and at the state level together, with the notable exception of the 2014 general election. Interestingly, DMK chief (and outgoing Tamil Nadu Chief Minister) M K Stalin was the first major Opposition leader to endorse Rahul Gandhi as a prime ministerial candidate ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Even during the 2024 general election campaign, the personal bonhomie between the two leaders was on full display when Gandhi addressed Stalin as his “elder brother” in a public rally.

In 2021, when the DMK returned to power in Tamil Nadu after a decade as part of an alliance comprising the Congress and other smaller parties, there were rumours of discontent among Congress party leaders over the DMK’s refusal to share power (in the form of ministries) in the state government. But the Congress, given its dwindling footprint in various states across the country, chose not to treat it as a deal-breaker.

But ahead of the 2026 Assembly election, a section of state Congress leaders reportedly wanted the party to explore an alliance with TVK in order to contest a higher number of seats than they would be allocated in its existing alliance with the DMK. There were also murmurs that some Congress leaders had read the tea leaves as far as anti-incumbency against the ruling DMK was concerned. But eventually the party chose to stick with the DMK-led alliance, wherein it contested 28 seats and won 5.

Now, with the TVK in pole position to form the government in Tamil Nadu after its spectacular electoral debut, any move by the Congress towards supporting Vijay’s party is likely to affect its ties with its long-time ally.