One seat among 294 in the Vidhan Sabha, of which the Trinamool Congress (TMC) has 220 in its pocket. That’s Sagardighi constituency in Jangipur of Murshidabad district in West Bengal, which the ruling party unexpectedly lost to the Congress in a bypoll in February. But for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee — bogged down by corruption scam allegations against party leaders since then — it is an uneasy portend requiring a change of tack.
And so, even though she publicly declared at a party meeting at her residence on Friday, and reiterated it at a meeting with Murshidabad leaders later, that the bypoll result of the Muslim-dominated Sagardighi seat didn’t indicate that the minority vote bank had deserted her party, and added for good measure that the TMC had lost because of its “own weaknesses”, the party supremo has begun reshuffling her minority front ahead of the statewide panchayat polls.
Soon after the Sagardighi setback, Mamata set up a five-member committee headed by Manteswar MLA Siddiqullah Chowdhury. She also raised the profile of the former West Bengal president of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind within the TMC by giving him the responsibility of three districts — Malda, Murshidabad and South Dinajpur — all minority-dominated. The Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind has deep roots among the Bengali-speaking Muslims of West Bengal.
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Correspondingly, the profile of Firhad Hakim aka Bobby within the party was lowered, by taking away his responsibility for the districts of Murshidabad, Howrah and Hooghly. Bobby is identified as an Urdu-speaking Muslim leader.
The simultaneous moves point to an acknowledgement by Mamata of the persistence of a subterranean rift between the mainly rural Bengali-speaking Muslims of the state and their mainly urban Urdu-speaking co-religionists, and the coalescing of the former into a vote bank under the leadership of the Nawsad Siddique-led Indian Secular Front (ISF), which backed the Congress candidate in the Sagardighi bypoll.
A senior TMC leader said, “Siddiqullah Chowdhury is not only a leader among Bengali-speaking Muslims, but also has the Jamiat — a grassroots organisation — behind him.” Hinting at the Furfura Sharif-led ISF, he added, “No other organisation has a bigger reach among the state’s minorities. Mamata Banerjee used the Jamiat in the 2021 Assembly elections, which benefited the TMC. Now, she is again trying to use it for the panchayat elections.”
Mamata has also changed the minority face of the TMC. Removing Haroa MLA Haji Nurul, she made another young Muslim leader — Itahar MLA Mosaraf Hossain — the new state president of the TMC minority cell.
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The senior leader added, “The CM desperately wants to rectify the mistakes that were identified after the Sagardighi bypoll. To buy time, she may also delay the panchayat polls from May to July, because our leadership is afraid the Sagardighi result may impact panchayat outcomes in districts like Birbhum, Murshidabad, Malda, East and West Burdwan.”
A section of TMC leaders believes Mamata’s criticism of the Congress since the bypoll setback is also meant to win back the minority voters. A Muslim TMC leader said, “Mamata Banerjee benefited from her identity as an anti-BJP figurehead among the state’s minorities in the 2021 Assembly elections. Before the 2023 panchayat polls and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, she wants to revive that image. That’s why she is distancing herself from the Congress, so that the minorities are left with no option but to choose her to stop the BJP.”
Emboldened by the TMC’s recent poll and scam allegation setbacks, the state’s opposition parties, though, don’t believe Banerjee’s manoeuvrings will benefit her.
CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty said, “The TMC may carry on with these permutations and combinations, but people can now easily differentiate between the TMC’s mask and real face. They realise that the TMC only seeks their votes, but bears no liability to society. They have already ruined the state.”
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BJP leader Samik Bhattacharya said, “In the last 11 years, the state’s minorities have seen murder and violence, but no development in their areas. Although how we offer our prayers may be different, our history and DNA are the same. Time has come for them to no longer accept being treated as mere voters, but be considered as stakeholders.”
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