Kolkata: Infighting and discontent seems to be brewing in the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC ahead of the 2021 assembly polls, with several top party leaders coming out in the open against the state government's handling of post cyclone Amphan restoration works and the coronavirus pandemic.
The growing dissatisfaction among the party rank and file over various issues has put the top Trinamool Congress leadership in a fix with just ten months to go for the state assembly polls. With last year's Lok Sabha poll results indicating a paradigm shift in the state politics with the saffron party emerging as the principal challenger to the TMC, the stakes are high for the TMC and time is precious for Mamata to set the house in order before assembly polls.
Switching of sides by many party legislators and MPs had cost the TMC dearly in the 2019 Parliamentary elections. The BJP had won 18 out of a total of 42 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal in the last general election, only four less than the TMC's tally of 22. According to sources, the recent outbursts of senior party leaders and ministers like Sadhan Pande, Subrata Mukherjee and party MP Mahua Moitra, has triggered a debate in the state's political circles.
"The recent flare-up by such senior leaders and that too in public is a matter of concern. Although the party has asked them not to express their views in public, what prompted them to go public? Whether they are trying to send some message, it needs to be looked into," a senior TMC leader said.
Although Mamata, without taking any name at a recent virtual party meet, had asked disgruntled leaders to leave the party instead of weakening it from inside, things have not improved as it appears. While Pande had openly questioned the party-run KMC's role in the post-cyclone restoration work, Mukherjee, one of the senior-most politicians of Bengal, had questioned the absence of the TMC top brass, including state ministers, in cyclone-affected areas of North and South 24 Parganas districts-which faced the brunt of the calamity.
Moitra, TMC national spokesperson and Lok Sabha MP, took a swipe at the party-run gram panchayats within her constituency, Krishnanagar, over unspent funds and unplanned work, and urged people to stand up against corruption by local political leaders. Amidst the rumblings, BJP leader Mukul Roy, once the number two in the Trinamool Congress and who is now the saffron party's key man in bringing the "disgruntled" leaders and elected representatives of the TMC to the party, claimed that "several top TMC leaders are in touch with us".
