BJP and Trinamool ... it all started as 'friends' ::: 28 years since 1998 ... now the Sourness in ties at its peak

Time is a great eraser ... both for sorrow and of joy.

-- 'The Palace of Illusions'

There is another maxim we can work on - ‘Nothing is permanent except Change’.

These theories seem to work well for the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress and the BJP.

In more ways than one - Mamata helped the Lotus party establish toehold in Bengal politics when the province was the safest Lal-Durg (red bastion). 

The ‘mutual bitterness’ now after 28 years towards one another by top Trinamool Congress and BJP leaders show that the battle of West Bengal in 2026 will be truly acerbic.

But in retrospective, both were allies.

The sourness is certainly at peak for friends-turned-foes!

During the 1998 parliamentary polls – hardly a year after its formation, the Trinamool Congress along with the Lotus party had picked up eight seats with a combined vote share of 34.63 per cent as the communists' ideology and 'perceived Bengali temperament' for the communist ideologies almost paled into insignificance in many constituencies.

Tapan Sikdar made it as a BJP nominee from Dum Dum humbling CPI-M veteran Nirmal Kanti Chatterjee by a convincing margin of 1.36 lakh votes.

The BJP’s vote share in 1998 made a quantum leap from 6.85 per cent to above 10 per cent though 13 of its other candidates had to bite the dust.

Thus if the Congress and the Left parties blame Mamata Didi (now aapa) for showing the saffron party the ‘gateway’ to enter Bengal, it's all not without good reasons. 

That year – the Congress vote share had nosedived to 15.2 per cent leaving them only one seat from West Bengal for legendary ABA Ghani Khan Chowdhury.

Thus entered Mamata Banerjee as a regional chieftain making a mark for herself and also made it to the Vajpayee cabinet. 

The Trinamool vote share was 24.43 taking almost two-thirds of the Congress vote and Mamata Banerjee’s candidates also snatched six seats from the Congress kitty and one from Forward Bloc.

She had seven MPs out of 21 candidates Trinamool fielded.

Notably; Forward Bloc lost the crucial Barasat seat – held by Chitta Basu since 1977 to Ranjit Panja, elder brother of Ajit Panja.

             Blogger in Kolkata

Moreover; a former Union Minister under Rajiv Gandhi, Ajit Panja too, returned safe from Calcutta North East – but on Trinamool ticket.

The alliance between Mamata Banerjee-led party and the saffron party continued in two subsequent elections in 1999 and 2004.

In 1999, Trinamool Congress vote share was 26.04 and it secured eight 8 seats while BJP won two seats. 

The BJP vote share increased marginally to 11.13 per cent and Mamata's party had polled 26.04 per cent.

Winning 10 seats was no small achievement for the Trinamool-BJP combine, but in 2004, the Left emerged the ‘right’ - the correct party or the one acceptable to the people of Bengal. 

And that changed all the friendship. Mamata knew the Muslim support base remained captive to the the communists.

In 2004; not only Vajpayee was voted out; Mamata could only ensure her personal victory from the state.

She was convinced that alliance with the BJP especially after 2002 Gujarat mayhem had spoiled her game.

That marked the beginning of her drift towards minority appeasement politics. It was a tectonic shift and slowly that swallowed her. 

     Amit Shah : When the Journey is Long, key Mantra is 'Hard work'

Prior to that in 2000 of course -- the Trinamool won the Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections. In the 2001 state assembly elections, Trinamool entered in a pact with Congress and had dumped BJP in the state to win 60 seats in the state Assembly polls.

I traveled extensively during elections in two parliamentary polls 2019 and 2024 and during state assembly battle of 2021 -- old timers in Purulia and in Birbhum recalled that BJP’s ‘refugee’ politics as underlined in its National Register of Citizens (NRC) in 2019 was a time-tested card even in previous elections.

Many intellectuals in Durgapur-Asansol belt did not actually the line that Mamata Banerjee had singularly helped BJP make 'successful' entry into Bengal politics in 1998. 

In fact in 1991 itself, they said -- long before Mamata came out of Congress, the BJP undercurrent was visible in Nadia, Murshidabad and West Dinajpur. 

In Purulia, a former teacher Amalendu Chakraborty had told me - “The BJP initially made their presence felt in 1991 in Murshibabad and West Dinajpur largely owing to its ability to woo the support of Bengali Hindi ‘refugee’ population”.

In fact, in 1991, the BJP vote share jumped from 1.67 per cent to 11.66 per cent and in many places in vulnerable north Bengal seats, the Lotus party came runners up to the CPI-M.

Notably from the electoral strategy, it was that year, the BJP had roped in two celebrities actor Victor Banerjee fielding and muscleman Manohor Aich fielding and making both to contest. 

Of course, both had lost the polls.

Those were the days (1991) when legendary Marxist Jyoti Basu's hold over the state prevailed and the CPI-M vote share was 35.99 per cent and the Left parties in total had won as many as 37 seats out of 42 in West Bengal.

ends