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While gearing up for the upcoming Panchayat polls in West Bengal where it has been ruling for the last three consecutive terms, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) is keenly looking for expansion in the Northeastern states like Meghalaya and Tripura, which are bound for the Assembly elections early next year.
West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee is currently on a three-day tour of Meghalaya – her first-ever visit to the state, where 12 of the total 17 Congress MLAs, led by former CM Mukul Sangma, had defected to the TMC in November 2021, making the latter the principal Opposition in the 60-member House.
Mukul Sangma is currently the Leader of the Opposition in the state ruled by the Conrad Sangma-led coalition government whose constituents include Conrad’s National People’s Party (NPP) as well as the BJP.
Mamata is accompanied by TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee and Manas Ranjan Bhuiyan, the party’s Meghalaya in-charge, during this visit. Abhishek has been touring Meghalaya and other Northeastern states regularly over the last several months.
The TMC chief will hold meetings with the Meghalaya party leaders from various levels, in the course of which she would set out a road map to them for the upcoming state Assembly polls.
Following Mamata’s arrival in Shillong on Monday afternoon, Mukul Sangma said, “We’re very happy that the TMC chairperson is here. All the foot soldiers from the party from across the state have got their chance to meet her.”
Addressing a TMC workers’ convention in Shillong on Tuesday, Mamata said that the BJP-led Centre has neglected Meghalaya and other Northeastern states. She also reportedly said that the TMC wanted to assist the Meghalaya people and ensure that the state is “ruled by sons of the soil”.
Apart from Meghalaya, the Mamata-Abhishek duo has also started planning strategies for the polls in the BJP-ruled Tripura.
Mamata appointed former Tripura Congress president Pijush Kanti Biswas as her party’s state chief last Sunday, barely five days after he joined the TMC along with some other leaders in her presence in Delhi. Abhishek and two TMC leaders in-charge of Tripura, Rajya Sabha MP Sushmita Dev and Rajeev Banerjee, were also present on the occasion.
After the TMC’s landslide victory in the West Bengal Assembly election last year, Abhishek had declared the party’s expansion plans in Tripura, Meghalaya, Assam, Manipur and other Northeastern states.
As part of this strategy, the TMC focused on building its organisation in Tripura, but the party has suffered a series of setbacks in the state, including Assembly bypoll defeats and defection of its leaders and workers to the BJP and the Congress. A few months ago, the state TMC chief Subal Bhowmick
switched to the BJP. However, a senior TMC leader said, “We are now trying to increase our organisational prowess in Tripura, which will be helped by the induction of Pijush Kanti Biswas.”
As part of its similar “national aspiration”, the TMC had forayed into the Goa Assembly elections with great fanfare earlier this year, but could not win a single seat.
