The calculation was that with the growing anti-Congress mood in the country and BJP’s Narendra Modi phenomenon to only ‘unite’ Muslims against the saffron party, a shot at a 3-digit number by Mamata Banerjee was not a far cry.

In what her detractors have alleged as ‘fantasy front’ with Anna Hazare, the Trinamul supremo’s maiden rally eyeing a bigger slice of the cake after the ensuing general elections came a cropper as the Gandhian activist himself gave the occasion a miss. The poor turnout – numbering a mere 1000 including an army of journalists, lensmen and TV crews only resulted in further embarrassment to Banerjee. 

She might have turned poetic at a later stage quoting her favaorite line of Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Ekla chalo rey’, the message was not lost on her and her cronies that national strategy needed much more fine tuning.

Although, a spokesperson for Anna Hazare, suggested that ill-health and ‘no proper prior information’ resulted in Anna skipping the rally, three days later Anna himself almost ended the tie up saying “How could I come to a place like Ram Lila ground where even 4000 people had not come, it’s the same place where in 2011 lakhs had gathered”. So, the ‘fantasy front’ of politician Mamata Banerjee and social activist plus Gandhian Anna has been grounded truly. Even a delay of about two-hours to formally commence the rally, originally billed as a platform to launch Banerjee’s national ambitions, could not help save the day for the Trinamool chief, who uprooted Leftists from the Bengal bastion almost single handedly.

While Ms Banerjee in her speech downplayed the poor turnout saying that it was an ‘Anna Hazare rally’, many did not buy her line. “How can we say, it was an Anna rally? The host was not there and our leader and chief minister came in,” argued another party leader.

Predictably in the evening meeting that day in Lutyen’s city, Didi gave a dressing down to a few of her lieutenants especially Mukul Roy, even as a number of other Trinamool leaders also said that such humiliation was unwarranted.

The TMC leaders’ grievance against Banerjee’s trusted lieutenant Mukul Roy is understandable. In recent times the former Railway Minister had earned his reputation in Bengal politics as a skillful poll manager and organisation master. Mukul had turned out to be a virtual number 2 – surpassing the likes of Partha Chatterjee, her number two in the state cabinet and Sudip Bandyopadhyaya, a seven-time MP.

“All Mukul Roy’s rivals are baying for his blood and correctly so,” says Rajiv Guha, a Facebook enthusiast in Kolkata. “This was a national misadventure...,” said a former union minister echoing the sentiment of several Trinamool party leaders.

Impact of Moditva: The greatest success tale in recent times in Bengal or for that matter in eastern India is the rapid marginalization of Mamata’s arch rivals the Left and to a large extent the Congress. But this very phenomenon now threatens Mamata’s writ in many constituencies across West Bengal. Sensing the trouble, a pragmatic politician that she is, her party has grown careful about the power of Moditva. On the other hand, BJP has fielded candidates across the state including celebrities and former police officials trying to cover up the saffron party’s organizational weakness. Thus, it stands a good chance at least to give a befitting fight to Trinamool in seats like Asansol – where popular singer Babul Supriyo is the BJP nominee. BJP has fielded film stars Joy Banerjee (Birbhum), George Baker (Kolkata), magician P C Sarkar (Jr) Barasat, former union minister S S Ahluwalia in Darjeeling and even stuck a deal with the influential Gorkh Janmukti Morcha in Darjeeling and pockets like Jalpaiguiri and Alipurdwar where there are a sizeable number of Gorkhas. Of course, Mamata has also played Bengal film stars well by fielding a galaxy of them. Her list of candidates include Moon Moon Sen, daughter of yesteryear’s Diva Suchitra Sen, to take on CPI-M veteran Basudeb Acharia and Dev (a new generation craze) for traditional CPI seat Ghatal – forcing even Gurudas Dasgupta to shy away from contest. Others include Indranil Sen, a Tollywood musician, who has also been given a TMC ticket to sweat it out against pradesh Congress chief and union minister Adhir Chowdhury from Behrampur in Murshidabad district. In Midnapore, the Trinamool candidate is veteran Bengali actress Sandhya Roy. Soumitra Roy, a lead singer of popular Bengali band Bhoomi, has been  fielded from Malda North and theatre personality Arpita Ghosh will try her electoral luck in Balurghat.

In fact, only on 19th February addressing a joint press conference with Mamata, Anna Hazare had set a target of 100 MPs for Didi’s party in the next Lok Sabha saying “I believe with 100 MPs under her leadership, she can make a big contribution towards bringing change. The change she is fighting for in Bengal all these years”. Anna further waxed eloquence, “Mere change of Government won’t help, we need a system change”.

The Trinamool leaders also readily latched on to the lofty goals. Sources say, the likes of Mukul Roy planned that once they manage numbers – 30 in Bengal out of 42 and around 60-70 from outside Bengal – Didi’s march towards the 7 Race Course Road (Prime Minister’s official residence) did not look like a distant dream. The story is that in such a scenario, Mukul could think of walking in as a possible Chief Minister.

The calculation was that with the growing anti-Congress mood in the country and BJP’s Narendra Modi phenomenon to only ‘unite’ Muslims against the saffron party, a shot at a 3-digit number by Mamata Banerjee was not a far cry. “Mamata is our best trump card. She is popular among all including Muslims. We don’t need anything else and Anna’s pan-India image can only add to our fantastic target,” former union minister Sishir Adhikari told Eastern Panorama.

Another Mamata lieutenant, Sukhendu Shekhar Roy said on 7th March, 5-days before the Delhi rally fiasco, that people from all sections of society including from media, retired civil and military officials, doctors and lawyers are “very keen to contest on a Trinamool ticket” in Delhi, Haryana and UP. “Our’s a unique electoral battle this time as both Didi (Mamata) and Annaji are associated with grassroots level politics and social work. People by and large see this as a unique united effort by a political party with civil society activists,” he said. Roy, a Rajya Sabha MP, further said that the Anna-Mamata combine is aimed at harming the Kejriwal-led AAP’s electoral prospect. “AAP is not at all a force to reckon with. During their 49-day stint in power in Delhi they proved that they cannot even run a municipality or a club house,” he said.

Another suave Trinamool leader, Derek O’Brien, an Anglo Indian, echoed similar sentiments and had taken pot shots at other powerful national players like Rahul Gandhi – calling him a ‘kindergarten leader’. 

Southern Booster:

Mamata Banerjee - an image of ‘Ma, Mati, Manush’ and the greatest crowd puller for Trinamool Congress - stood alone in the spacious Ram Lila Ground in New Delhi staring helplessly at hundreds of empty chairs.

The enthusiasm got the necessary ‘booster’ once the media gave adequate publicity to the so called Anna-Mamata axis. In fact, Didi even set up a ‘war room’ to manage election work in Delhi. The make-belief that they could be a ‘game changer’ became evident when Jayalalitha, AIADMK chief, from the southern State of Tamil Nadu responded favourably to Mamata’s gesture. In a well crafted television interview, Mamata said that she did not mind Jayalalitha as the next Prime Minister as both of them – Jaya and Mamata – “have worked together earlier during the Vajpayee regime in 1998-99.”

Jayalalitha even called Mamata and said that the grapevine of Mamata-Anna-Jaya axis will at least pin prick the other ‘front’ cobbled together by Left parties and other State-level outfits like Samajwadi and JD(U). However the balloon has been pricked now.

 The ire for the fiasco is already directed against Mamata’s Man Friday, Mukul Roy. She has also ordered a probe as to whether there was any ‘internal sabotage’ and if it was due to any ‘;faux pas’ in Team Anna. Trinamool has the right to know who is responsible. Apparently some differences between two close aides of Anna too could be a factor.

Mamata Banerjee sounded her anguish to lieutenant Mukul Roy and two other MPs Derek O’Brien and Sukhendu Roy for their poor reading of the ground reality. The fiasco is also being attributed to a lack of coordination between Mukul Roy and K D Singh from Jharkhand.  The fact that on 1st October 2012, K D Singh had managed a good turnout for a small Jantar Mantar ‘anti-FDI’ protest meet is all the more vital.

More importantly, Anna has already made it clear that while he was impressed by Mamata, he had no interest to salvage the political interests of Trinamool.

In the meantime as Mamata tries to wriggle herself out by fielding candidates across the country – including Assam and that too a former Meghalaya Governor Ranjit Mooshahary from Kokrajhar – another lady Jayalalitha has almost forgotten that she has a friend in Kolkata. 

In a coalition era, fair weather friendship is only the art of the day in the run up to all the Lok Sabha elections.

Swati Deb