A day after Mamata Banerjee pulled the plug on the I.N.D.I.A. bloc in West Bengal, Rahul Gandhi was greeted with placards and festoons extolling Mamata when the latter’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra entered Cooch Behar district from Assam.
A group calling itself Nagarik Mancha waved festoons and placards at Bakshirhat while the yatra was passing through which said that Mamata was enough to take on the BJP in West Bengal.
The Trinamool Congress’ Minister for North Bengal Affairs, Udayan Guha, told The Daily Guardian: “I know the Nagarik Mancha people. They are with us and they know that Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress party is more than enough to take on and defeat the BJP in the State. We have done it in the past and shall do the same in the future as well”.
Following a two-day hiatus on January 26-27, Rahul Gandhi’s yatra will navigate through Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, Uttar Dinajpur, and Darjeeling districts before entering Bihar on January 29.
Re-entering West Bengal on January 31 via Malda, it will pass through Murshidabad, both Congress stronghold districts, before departing the State on February 1.
The Bengal leg of the yatra spans 523 km across six districts and six Lok Sabha constituencies-Darjeeling, Raigunj, North and South Malda, and two in Murshidabad over five days.
This marks Rahul Gandhi’s first visit to the State since the April-May 2021 Assembly polls.
Former State Congress president Pradip Bhattacharya expressed optimism, stating: “We are hopeful that the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra of Rahul ji will give a new lease of life to Bengal’s Congress unit. This yatra will not only help us organisationally but also electorally ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.”
Meanwhile, a day after Mamata Banerjee binned the chances of any understanding with the Congress Party, her party, the Trinamool Congress squarely blamed Pradesh Congress Committee chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury for the alliance not working out.
Chowdhury had called the Trinamool chief an “opportunist” leader and said the Congress is capable of contesting polls on its own.
Both Kunal Ghosh, the Trinamool Congress spokesperson and Derek O’Brien, Trinamool’s parliamentary party leader in Rajya Sabha and national spokesperson, told the media that Chowdhury had repeatedly spoken out against the bloc. “He is the reason for the alliance not working out in West Bengal,” Kunal Ghosh said.
“After the general elections, if the Congress does its job and defeats the BJP on a substantial number of seats, the Trinamool Congress will very much be a part of the front that believes and fights for the Constitution,” Derek O’Brien added.
Ghosh said Chowdhury was the “gravedigger” of the I.N.D.I.A. alliance in Bengal. “It is because of him and his daily rant that things have fallen flat. After the Chief Minister’s byte yesterday, they (Congress) are getting into damage control. It is too late now,” he added.
He added that the Trinamool Congress “was very patient” during the seat-sharing negotiations. “We were gracious enough. But all we saw was delay, delay and delay,” he added.
However, Congress Working Committee member Deepa Dasmunsi said: “It seems the Trinamool Congress is trying to help the BJP in the State”.
In another snub to the Congress Party, another I.N.D.I.A. bloc member – the CPIM – too hit out at the lack of any communication from the grand old party.
Senior CPIM leader Surja Kanta Mishra, echoed Mamata Banerjee’s words, and said that his party, despite being an “integral member of the anti-BJP front”, had not received any invitation to participate in the West Bengal leg of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.