The sweeping victory of the Trinamool Congress candidates in the by-polls held to the six assembly constituencies in Bengal on November 20, has surpassed even the wildest expectations of the TMC leadership. Out of the six seats, Madarihat seat was with the BJP while the other five seats were with the TMC in the 2021 assembly elections.
In the by polls, the results of which were announced on Saturday the TMC not only retained its five seats with much bigger margins but also defeated the BJP candidate by more than 30,000 votes, thereby securing all the six seats. The polling took place in the wake of the tragic incident at the R.G Kar College relating the rape and murder of a lady medical doctor which led to an unprecedented upsurge of emotions of the doctors and the common people demanding justice for the victim. This upsurge took the form of a widespread movement in which the left parties, especially the CPI(M) took leafing part.
The opposition parties, especially the Left had expectations that this upsurge which targeted the Trinamool government’s corruption under Mamata Banerjee who also is minister in charge of health, will have impact on the electoral mood of the people in the six constituencies in favour of the Left, but nothing such happened. Instead, the voters exercised their mandate with vengeance in favour of the TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee.
Related Posts:
As regards the BJP, the state party leadership has no excuse to give. All its campaign against TMC has failed to produce any result, though excepting one, the BJP remains the second party after TMC in terms of voting figures. As regards the CPI(M) which still has some semblance of organisation left among the Left parties, the situation is worsening every year.
The voting percentage is going down and there is no prospect of any turnaround which the leadership is talking about. The latest sweep of Trinamool Congress shows that the TMC is the only party among the INDIA bloc partners which has been consistently defeating BJP in all the elections in the recent years. Mamata has thus emerged stronger among the INDIA Bloc partners as a big fighter against the BJP.
It is quite possible that the Congress high command will coordinate more with TMC in the coming months, and there can be an alliance of the Congress and the TMC for the 2026 assembly elections. The positive side of the TMC leadership is that the top leaders especially Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee identify the weaknesses after any reverses and take corrective action.
Bengal has a left tradition. Even in Trinamool, there are many people with a left past and still clinging to a left perspective. If the coming February conference of the CPI(M) can draw up a viable road map based on objective assessment of the situation, that should at least help the CPI(M) to improve its position in 2026 assembly polls from zero to a few seats.
