COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Congress trying to split Trinamul

Arup Chanda in Calcutta

Efforts seem to be on to split the Trinamul Congress which has seven members in Parliament.

The Congress has set its eyes on at least four vulnerable Trinamul MPs who 'could be won back to the party fold'.

The four MPs are former Union minister Ajit Panja, his brother Ranjit Panja, bureaucrat-turned-politician Bikram Sarkar and Akbar Ali Khondakar.

Before Saturday's vote of confidence in Parliament, Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee alleged that two senior Congress Working Committee members had come to Calcutta to engineer defections from her party.

Without naming any Congress leader, she even alleged that they had offered Rs 20 million to Khondakar in exchange for his vote during the confidence motion in Parliament.

It is a fact that senior Congress leaders Sharad Pawar and Tariq Anwar had come to Calcutta. But their visits were said to be personal in nature.

Realising that promises of ministerial berths in the next government might lead to the disintegration of her party, Mamata has been doing her best to keep her flock together.

However, the going may not be very smooth for Mamata as many Congress leaders are reportedly in touch with the four MPs, all of whom have sufficient reasons to either join the Congress or form a break-away group and support a Congress-led government.

The differences between Ajit Panja and Mamata are quite well known. Ajit Panja was a strong proponent of joining the Atal Bihari Vajpayee ministry.

In fact in January, Panja had meet Prime Minister Vajpayee, and submitted a list of ministerial berths which the Trinamul Congress had wanted. Ajit Panja made the list public after the meeting and indicated that his party was all set to join the government.

This angered Mamata and she allegedly cast her dice in such a manner so as to ensure that none of her party MPs could become ministers. She demanded the railway ministry knowing very well that it could not be given to her. She stated that her party would not join the government unless she was made the railway minister.

Ajit Panja and many others in the Trinamul were peeved but they had no option but to remain quiet.

Ajit Panja had all along been a faithful soldier of the Congress but he had quit the party because of his personal enmity with Congress Working Committee member Pranab Mukherjee. He has also been a strong critic of former Congress president Sitaram Kesri.

He is still a die-hard Nehru-Gandhi family loyalist and now with Sonia Gandhi as party chief Ajit Panja seems to be the right man to be approached by the Congress.

Ranjit Panja, who is a well-known dermatologist, has been elected from the Left stronghold of Barasat. He is Ajit's elder brother.

Bikram Sarkar's relations with Congress leaders have always been cordial even though he served as an IAS officer under the Left Front government.

It was following former West Bengal Congress chief Somen Mitra's recommendation that then Union minister for surface transport Jagdish Tytler had made him the chairman of the Calcutta Port Trust.

Of the four MPs, Akbar Ali Khondakar seems to be the softest target for the Congress. Khondakar was elected from Sreerampur in Hooghly district where a majority of the voters are Muslims.

In the event of a general election Khondakar will find it very hard to get elected again if he continues to support the BJP.

Congress sources in West Bengal are certain that these four Trinamul MPs will desert Mamata and return to the party fold.

As far as Mamata is concerned they feel her chances are slim following her criticism of Sonia.

However, they are keeping their fingers crossed as everything would depend on the configuration of the next government.

"If the Congress forms the government, a split in the Trinamul is inevitable," said a West Bengal Congress leader.

Tell us what you think of this report