Mamata Banerjee's Strategic Move To Break Away From Opposition Ranks

Mamata Banerjees Strategic Move To Break Away From Opposition Ranks
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Highlights

Mamata Banerjee's decision to break away from Opposition ranks and forge her own path signals a new development on the national political landscape.

Mamata Banerjee's decision to break away from Opposition ranks and forge her own path signals a new development on the national political landscape. At a time when political parties are coming together to take on the BJP, the West Bengal chief minister decided to plough her own lonely furrow on the national scene. Moreover, West Bengal will go to elections in 2021.

The TMC supremo accused the Congress and Left parties of engineering violence in West Bengal during the course of the countrywide Bharat Bandh on January 8. The call for a shutdown was a partial success and had some impact on West Bengal, where the Congress and Left competed with each other trying to be more visible in a political scene dominated completed by Trinamool Congress (TMC).

Mamata Banerjee's eagerness to break away from the attempted opposition bloc is fraught with political reasons. She clearly sees no need to share political space with either the Congress or Communist Party (CPI-M), both of whom she fought bitterly over the past several years. The TMC chief declared on their involvement in the violent incidents related to the Bandh that the Left and Congress "are finished".

The BJP has made some inroads in West Bengal as its success in the Lok Sabha elections illustrates. It won 18 seats, stunning Mamata Banerjee's TMC. The ruling party at the Centre probably reckons that issues which large sections of the West Bengal population are seized with, such the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR)will work to the party's favour as far as its voter base is concerned.

The Congress has become largely irrelevant in many parts of West Bengal and is seeking to make a comeback. Being seen as part of a united opposition with Mamata Banerjee in it elsewhere in the country will help its cause in the eastern state.

The CPM does not have the traction it once had in West Bengal. The party's fortunes slid sharply since 2011 when it was first unseated by Mamata Banerjee after a long reign of more than three decades.

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