North-East: TMC banks on identity, Sangma and sops to win polls

The Trinamool Congress is looking towards the North-East to keep its national ambition afloat after the Goa debacles.

Of the three northeastern states going to polls in February, Mamata Banerjee’s TMC will be in the fray in Meghalaya and Tripura. In Nagaland it is not fielding any candidate.

Dearth of local leaders in Tripura

In Tripura, the TMC seems to have lost the momentum it had gained in the 2021 civic polls, garnering about 24 per cent votes. Its vote share of over 20 per cent in Agartala Municipal Corporation was higher than the CPI(M)’s 18 per cent.

Also read: CPI(M), Cong to hold ‘restore democracy’ rally in Tripura

In the absence of a popular face and strong organisational base, the party has failed to grow in this Bengali-dominated state. Last year it had to even sack its state president Subal Bhowmik for allegedly “hobnobbing” with the BJP. He is likely to join the saffron party.

The TMC made Tripura’s former Congress president Pijush Kanti Biswas its new state president immediately after he had joined the party in December last year. Such is the dearth of local leadership in the party in Tripura.

It is not yet clear whether the party will contest all the 60 seats in the state though it is hoping to gain from the alliance between the state’s two traditional political rivals – the Congress and the CPI (M). “Many Congress workers and supporters who had suffered the Communist atrocities will not vote for their own party because of its alliance with the Left Front,” claimed Biswas.

“We will contest in the seats where we have a chance to win. In other seats we are ready for an electoral understanding with non-Congress and non-CPI (M) parties,” he added.

Also read: Tripura assembly poll: Parties vie for support of ‘tribal messiah’

‘Sangma factor’ at play in Meghalaya

In Meghalaya, the party has a real chance of taking a shot at forming the government. Of the state’s 60 assembly constituencies, it has already announced candidates for 52 seats.

Former Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma, his wife Dikkanchi D Shira, his daughter Miani D Shira and his younger brother Zenith M Sangma were among the prominent TMC nominees that include nine sitting MLAs and seven tribal council members.

Mukul Sangma has clearly been rewarded adequately for walking into the TMC with 11 Congress legislators in November 2021 to make the party the principal opposition in the state. The TMC is optimistic that the former chief minister, who is a very influential politician of the state, will help it form its first ever government outside Bengal.

It is replicating its Bengal model centered on welfarism, identity and popularity of its chief ministerial face to win elections in the hill state.

Also read: Why BJP is upset with Meghalaya Assembly poll date

Sangma, a physician-turned politician and a good singer—an important trait in this music loving state – has a significant following across the state.

After the political eclipse of former Union minister and Lok Sabha speaker Purno A Sangma, Mukul Sangma was an undisputed king of the Garo Hills that account for 24 of the state’s 60 seats. That was until the last elections when Conrad K Sangma- led National People’s Party (NPP) won in Garo areas 12 seats out of its overall tally of 19. Mukul Sangma-led Congress had emerged as the single largest party with 21 seats. A conglomeration of regional parties and BJP piped the Congress at the power race.

Many political equations have changed since then.  After the dramatic development of November 2021, the TMC has replaced the Congress as the main opposition party in the state.

This time around, the TMC is expecting Mukul Sangma to regain his lost ground to lead the party to a historic victory.

“The NPP will not win a single seat from Garo Hills in the coming elections as the voters have become disillusioned with the lack of governance of the NPP-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance,” claimed TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee at a recent rally in Garo Hills.

The MDA appears to be disintegrating with the NPP and the BJP, which had got only two seats last time, deciding to go solo in the February elections, breaking the post-poll alliance they had formed with three other parties and independents to keep the Congress away from power after the 2018 elections.

Hiccups en route

The Congress after a series of desertions is going to the polls for the first time in the state without any sitting MLA.

The TMC thinks it will be the beneficiary of the split in the ruling alliance and the depletion of Congress’s strength.

“The TMC is the only credible alternative to the state’s present discredited regime because it is the only party which can challenge both the BJP and the Congress,” TMC MP Sushmita Dev told The Federal.

There are however many negatives that the TMC will have to overcome to achieve its Meghalaya goal.  First of all it has the tag of being a ‘Bengali’ party. The issues surrounding non-tribal migrants, especially Bengalis and Nepalis, are always a sore point in Meghalaya politics.

To get rid of the tag, the party is trying to turn the allegation against it on its head, launching a counter identity narrative.

TMC chief Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek while campaigning in Meghalaya have been insisting that the “locals and not outsiders” will run the government if the TMC is voted to office unlike the present government which is run from Guwahati and Delhi.

“Why should a de-facto prime minister from Guwahati run all the state governments in the northeast?” Mamata asked in an oblique reference to her Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma, the BJP’s firefighter in the region.

She accused the NPP-led government of being a “proxy” that cannot take its own decisions.

Promise of Inner Line Permit

The West Bengal chief minister also promised that if her party formed the government in Meghalaya it would constitute an expert committee to look into the demand for implementation of the Inner Line Permit (ILP) in the state.

Many civil society organisations in Meghalaya are demanding to put the state under the ILP regime to regulate migration of people from other Indian states to Meghalaya.

Also read: As poll season approaches, BJP turns gaze to ethnic faultlines in East

“The NPP and BJP are taking the ILP issue lightly, but we are taking it very seriously,” she asserted.

“Our detractors are saying Bengal will rule Meghalaya if TMC is voted to power. This is not true. I assure you that son of soil (Mukul Sangma) will be the chief minister of Meghalaya and he will not bow down to external forces in Guwahati and Delhi,” Abhishek said in another rally.

To further push its identity narrative, the TMC is alleging that Meghalaya’s interests are being compromised at the behest of “external forces” based in Guwahati and Delhi.

“Over 13,000 acres of land was given to Assam because the remote-controlled government in the state failed to protect the interest of Meghalaya,” Mukul Sangma alleged.

Anti-Christian narrative

In this Christian-dominated state, the TMC is also raking up the issue of BJP’s alleged anti-Christian stance.

“Christians are attacked in every BJP-ruled state. We have never heard about such attacks in the North-East. But ever since the BJP government came to power in Assam, we are seeing similar attacks against the Church. BJP is working to fulfill its hidden agenda (of making India a Hindu rashtra),” said TMC MLA Zenith M Sangma.

Also read: BJP’s anti-conversion plank can prove costly in Christian-majority NE states

The party is claiming that any vote cast in favour of a non-TMC party, even the Congress, will be a vote for the BJP.

Pointing out that the Congress MLAs in Goad defected to the BJP after elections, Abhishek said such things should not be allowed to be repeated in Meghalaya.

Populist schemes a ‘debt trap’?

In India’s only matriarchal state, the TMC is banking immensely on women power, promising that within 100 days of coming to power it will implement the “We Card” scheme modeled on West Bengal’s Lakshmir Bhandar scheme.

Under this scheme, The TMC promises guaranteed income support of ₹1,000 per month to women of every household.

Also read: Meghalaya polls: Day after Mamata rally, NPP terms her schemes ‘debt traps’

Besides, it has also promised to create over 3 lakh jobs and provide financial assistance of ₹1,000 per month to all unemployed youths under its Meghalaya Youth Empowerment (MYE) scheme.

The NPP said these populist promises are a sure recipe for a debt trap.

“It is unclear as to from where the AITC will bring the money to implement the schemes that would cost ₹2,000 crore to the exchequer, about 50 per cent of the state’s expenditure,” the NPP said in a press statement.

The TMC has failed to give a roadmap as to how it would generate money to implement these schemes, creating apprehensions that such welfarism might create fund crunch in the state, impacting development and even payment of salaries to the government employees.

The bigger challenge for the TMC will, however, come after elections as it has a poor track record of retaining its MLAs in the region.

The party had won five seats in Arunachal Pradesh in 2009 and seven seats in Manipur in 2012. It got six legislators through defection from Congress in Tripura in 2016. But all its MLAs subsequently defected.

In Meghalaya, four of the 12 Congress MLAs, who had joined the TMC, had already left the party. The challenge for the TMC will be to buck the trend.