Introspect: TMC to Congress after Maharashtra Assembly elections defeat

Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress on Saturday advised the Congress to introspect and analyse why it had failed to stop the Bharatiya Janata Party’s juggernauts in Maharashtra and Haryana although the parties led by Mamata Banerjee and Hemant Soren succeeded in defeating the saffron party.

After it won in West Bengal’s all six assembly constituencies, where bye-elections were held, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party took a subtle dig at the Congress, one of its partners in the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, pointing at the poor show of the grand old party in Maharashtra.

“I don’t want to blame the Congress right now. But if Mamata Banerjee can stop the BJP in West Bengal and if Hemant Soren can stop the BJP in Jharkhand, why cannot the Congress do it in Maharashtra and Haryana? This is something the Congress should thoroughly analyse,” Kunal Ghosh, a senior leader of the Trinamool Congress, told journalists in Kolkata. He added that the Congress should do “self-criticism”.

He also said that the welfare schemes introduced by Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress government for the women and other sections of the society in West Bengal had been copied by the BJP in Maharashtra to win the assembly elections in the western state.

“What Mamata thinks today BJP thinks day after tomorrow,” said Ghosh, alleging that the BJP had been criticising the welfare schemes introduced by the TMC government in West Bengal.