Explained: Why BJP may be quietly rooting for the TMC's survival?
The Trinamool Congress is in the grip of its worst internal crisis since Mamata Banerjee founded the party in 1998. Last Wednesday, 60 of its 80 MLAs openly defied her, rallying behind two-time Rajya Sabha MP Ritabrata Banerjee to block her choice of Leader of Opposition. The rebellion succeeded.
by Zee Media Bureau · Zee NewsWest Bengal's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party finds itself in a peculiar position --- watching its defeated rival unravel, and hoping it doesn't fall apart entirely. The Trinamool Congress is in the grip of its worst internal crisis since Mamata Banerjee founded the party in 1998. Last Wednesday, 60 of its 80 MLAs openly defied her, rallying behind two-time Rajya Sabha MP Ritabrata Banerjee to block her choice of Leader of Opposition. The rebellion succeeded. Ritabrata was elected to the post, leaving Mamata's authority in the legislature looking distinctly hollow.
Yet within the BJP, the response has been notably muted. There have been no calls to accelerate the TMC's collapse, no open doors for defectors. BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya has explicitly warned against the "Trinamoolisation of the BJP." The party, it seems, is in no hurry to deliver the killing blow. The reason, according to those watching Bengal's politics closely, comes down to one word, the Left.
A ghost that is stirring
The CPI(M)-led Left Front ruled West Bengal without interruption for 34 years, from 1977 to 2011. After Mamata swept them from power, a decade and a half of TMC dominance reduced them to near-irrelevance, no Assembly seats, no Lok Sabha seats, a cadre network gathering dust.
But something has shifted since the May 4 election results. For the first time since 2016, the CPI(M) has won an Assembly seat, taking Domkal. In the Falta repoll, it polled over 40,000 votes, finishing second behind the BJP and comfortably outpacing the TMC. Party offices that had sat shuttered for years are being renovated and reopened. Trade union body CITU and teachers' organisation ABTA have returned to the streets, visibly leading protests, over hawker evictions at railway stations, among other issues, in spaces where the TMC has been largely absent.
Kolkata-based author and journalist Snigdhendu Bhattacharya puts it plainly, "The BJP could very easily split the TMC if it wanted to. But they are refraining from doing so because a section of the BJP leadership in Bengal wants the TMC to stay. They are worried the Left will repeat what the BJP did."
What the BJP did, in 2019 and again in 2021, was to peel away more than 20 per cent of Bengal's traditional Left-leaning voters, translating that into 18 Lok Sabha seats and 77 Assembly seats. The fear now is that a resurgent CPI(M)-Congress alliance could run the same play, absorbing the TMC's fractured voter base and climbing back to relevance on the ruins of Mamata's party.
The Odisha parallel
Bhattacharya has drawn a comparison with neighbouring Odisha, where the Biju Janata Dal suffered a heavy defeat at the BJP's hands in 2024. Despite serious internal tensions, centred on the relationship between party chief Naveen Patnaik and his influential aide VK Pandian, the BJD held together. Bhattacharya argues this was no accident; the BJP stayed out of the internal dispute, preferring a weakened BJD in the opposition benches to a vacuum that the Congress might fill.
"The BJP kept the BJD together to keep the Congress out of Odisha," he wrote, adding, "Similarly, it will seek to keep the TMC more or less intact in West Bengal."
Journalist Sayantan Ghosh has described what is unfolding in Bengal as an entirely new political model. "What we are witnessing is a completely new model of dealing with an opposition party," he wrote on X. adding, "The objective appears to be the creation of an opposition formation that does not directly challenge the ruling party, in this case, the BJP, while continuing to claim the political space of the original party."
The TMC, after all, is a regional force. Its ambitions beyond Bengal have largely stalled. A Congress-Left combine, by contrast, consists of national parties with organisational networks stretching across multiple states. A revival in Bengal, historically the Left's strongest ground, could provide momentum for a far broader challenge to the BJP at the national level.
BJP MP Saumitra Khan recently acknowledged the party's latent power over the situation, claiming roughly 50 TMC MLAs and 20 MPs were ready to switch sides if Delhi gave the green light. That the green light has not come speaks volumes.
Can the Left actually do it?
A revival is one thing; becoming the principal opposition is quite another. Bhattacharya is measured in his assessment. The CPI(M) has rebuilt some momentum, but converting that into a genuine challenge to the BJP will demand a significant change in approach.
"The Left has all this while focused most of its energy on attacking the TMC," he said, adding, "It will now need to focus its energy on the BJP. The Left must not expect TMC supporters to flip red if it keeps on attacking them."
He believes a Left-Congress alliance could credibly draw both minority voters and sections of the Hindu electorate in southern Bengal. But the party must stop alienating the very people it needs to win over. Rebuilding a statewide organisation that was systematically dismantled over fifteen years of TMC rule remains a formidable task.
Nothing is settled. The TMC has not collapsed, and may yet stabilise. The Left's grassroots activity has not yet translated into the kind of broad electoral coalition needed to threaten the BJP in earnest. But the anxiety is real, and it explains why, in Bengal today, the party that just won a landslide is quietly hoping its beaten opponent manages to stay on its feet.
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