Mamata All India Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s personal relationship with Congress Parliamentary Party chief Sonia Gandhi remains unaffected Although her party has lost the West Bengal assembly elections and is in disarray.
From presenting Sonia Gandhi with a special stole to inviting her to share the stage at the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA)’s press conference, Mamata’s bond with the Congress leader – which began during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister – has withstood the test of time and political upheavals.
The former West Bengal chief minister was the only non-Congress leader to speak in the packed press conference. “Vanish (Gyanesh) Kumar chor hai, daaku hai. He should resign immediately. Let us save democracy and let the security of voting rights be restored. Congress insiders have maintained that Rahul’s equations with Mamata are far from smooth and pointed out that the former had promoted Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury – Mamata’s bête noire – as the president of the West Bengal unit of the Congress for a long time. In the meeting, Rahul emphasised on a broad-based partnership. “We can’t get there alone. You can’t get there alone. “There is no point in saying who suffered more. This (fighting Prime Minister Modi and Kumar) has to be done by everybody,” he added.
In her usual style, steeped in emotion and theatrics, she vowed to fight Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar as a “worker”, ready to take the battle to any level. If votes are stolen, then how can a country run,” Mamata said. But amid renewed ties with the Congress, fuelled by the Trinamool (Mamata)’s desperation to remain relevant in a Bengal now dominated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Mamata did not forget to credit Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi for his first yatra against “vote chori” in Bihar last year, undertaken with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav. But together we will,” he said, in an apparent reference to upcoming political battles and elections. Rahul said he has studied how elections are being manipulated and has begun receiving “serious information” against the government from officials in the Enforcement Directorate, Central Bureau of Investigation and other agencies, something he claimed did not happen earlier.
