Lok Sabha elections 2019: Mamata Banerjee, fighter to the core who banks on planning
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is one of the principal proponents of a front of regional parties that are opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party and organised the first unity show in Kolkata on January 19, which she announced as far back as July 21, 2018.
One of the most prominent opposition politicians in the country, Trinamool Congress chief and Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has vowed to make a clean sweep of the 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in her state going to polls in seven phases from April 11.
She is one of the principal proponents of a front of regional parties that are opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party and organised the first unity show in Kolkata on January 19, which she announced as far back as July 21, 2018.
Born in 1955 to a lower middle class family, Mamata Banerjee plunged into politics in the 1970s when she was a student. She attracted the attention of the nation in 1984 Lok Sabha elections by defeating Somnath Chatterjee, one of the most prominent Parliamentarians of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
In the following decades she won as many as seven Lok Sabha polls and became the railways minister twice, but her goal was to remove the Left Front from power in West Bengal that she achieved in May 2011, when her Trinamool Congress party, only 14-year old then, trounced the mighty Left machine ending its 34-year grip on Bengal that began in 1977.
But this time Mamata Banerjee is facing the firepower and resources of the BJP that has chosen Bengal as a focus state with a declared objective to win 23-24 of the seats in the state.
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A street fighter to the core, the 64-year-old leader is trying to respond with both decibels and meticulous planning, knowing well that if her principal opponent grabs the seats it has set out for, it might sound the death knell for her in the Assembly elections in 2021.
Over the past few months she has made it clear that she would focus her attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whom she accuses of being the architect of policies such as demonetisation, a hurried Goods and Services Tax, the citizenship screening exercise in Assam and a policy of letting loose central investigative agencies such as the CBI and ED on any politician who dares to criticise the Centre.
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She has also questioned the Prime Minister on the Pulwama terror attack and the casualties in the air-strikes on Balakot, asking whether what she called ‘war hysteria’ had anything to do with the impending elections.
Mamata has also consistently criticised the BJP and RSS for trying to import Hindutva that she alleged, is alien to the culture of West Bengal and projected herself as the guardian of Bengal’s traditional liberal culture..
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However, in 2018, several Trinamool leaders held a conference for Hindu priests in a few districts and organised Ram Navami processions that were allegedly designed to project a pro-Hindu image to balance the undue pro-Muslim tilt in her policies.
Trinamool Congress leaders point out that Mamata Banerjee’s charisma and personal pull that the party depended on to topple the Left Front government continues to work on a large number of voters in the state. She has also been high on populism and has rolled out welfare schemes that cover one from the cradle to the grave, though opposition leaders have doubted the efficacy of these schemes.
However, she has a few threats to contend with. Continuous factional feuds in the ruling party in different districts is perhaps the most disconcerting. She also has to watch out whether the Saradha case that the CBI is pursuing in the Supreme Court springs some nasty surprises for the party. A third headache is the alleged overdrive by the BJP to poach on her party leaders .
The chief minister with a declared weakness for tea and puffed rice and an undeclared weakness for white saris and white rubber sandals only knows it too well that if she wants to make her political future colourful enough, she has to push close to 42. Really close.