After Goa, Trinamool Congress's target to form a government beyond Bengal faced a setback both in Tripura and Meghalaya, where results of the Assembly elections were announced on Thursday.
In Tripura, a state with an almost Bengal-like demographic pattern, Mamata Banerjee's party failed to open its account while in Christian-majority Meghalaya, TMC managed to win only five out of the 57 seats it contested with a target to snatch power from the homegrown National People's Party (NPP). Elections were conducted on February 27 for 59 of the 60 Assembly seats.
After trouncing the BJP in Bengal in 2021, the TMC first set its eyes on Tripura with the party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee repeatedly claiming that Mamata Banerjee's party would remove the BJP from the Northeastern state like in Bengal. But surprisingly, the party not only slowed down its activities ahead of the polls but also fielded only 28 candidates.
"After the Bengal victory, TMC made a lot of noise but they never looked in a contesting mood in Tripura. The TMC is perceived here as a party to cut votes of the Opposition CPI (M)-Congress combine and thereby help the BJP. They have done the same. For example, in the Ramnagar Assembly constituency, TMC pocketed over 2,000 votes, thereby helping BJP defeat a better candidate, Purushottam Roy Barman (Independent backed by the Left) by a margin of just 897 votes," a senior journalist based in Agartala, Sekhar Datta told DH on Thursday.
In Meghalaya, among the five TMC candidates, who tasted success this time, were two of its biggest faces, former CM Mukul Sangma and the party's state unit president, Charles Pyngrope. Mukul, in fact, lost in one of the two seats he contested and won with a margin of only 359 votes in the Songsak constituency.
The TMC did not win a single seat in the 2018 Assembly elections but suddenly became the principal Opposition party after 12 Congress MLAs led by Mukul and Charlse jumped ship. The party, in fact, projected the two leaders as "sons of the soil" as the ruling NPP and BJP started calling Mamata Banerjee's party "an outsider" and a Bengal party.
During her first visit to Shillong on December 13 last year, Mamata Banerjee had claimed that a Goa-like verdict would not be repeated in Meghalaya. "In Goa, we did not have strong leaders but here we have the two strongest leaders, Mukul and Charles," she said when asked about TMC's chances in Meghalaya.
This time, it seemed like the main battle would be between the NPP and TMC but the latter's victory only in five seats came as a disappointment to the party workers, who switched sides from the Congress in order to fight against the NPP-BJP.
"The repeated tag of an outsider party cost us badly. Instead of countering the outsider allegations strongly, the party promised Bengal-like schemes and development formulas. This did not go down well with the tribal voters as there is a strong anti-Bengali sentiment among tribals in Meghalaya," a TMC leader in Garo Hills told DH. Garo Hills is the centre of Meghalaya politics, having 24 Assembly seats.
The party insiders in Meghalaya feel that TMC's promise to revoke the border pact the NPP-led government signed with Assam to end the 50-year-old border disputes also went against its prospect in the elections in several seats. "No other party objected to the border pact as people wanted a solution to the long conflict," said one TMC leader.
Although the TMC claimed that snatching power from the NPP was their target, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on February 23 said Mamata Banerjee's party had put up candidates against Congress in order to help BJP as they did in Goa.
After the results on Thursday, Abhishek Banerjee, in a tweet said that TMC would play the role of a responsible opposition party in Meghalaya.
The United Democratic Party, a regional party, on the other hand, increased its tally from six in 2018 to 11 this time. The UDP is likely to join the NPP-led coalition government again this time. The NPP emerged as the single largest party by winning 26 seats.