Kolkata, April 16 (). Outspoken on every issue, the Trinamool Congress has been surprisingly silent in reacting to the Election Commission of India (ECI) recently stripping the ruling party of West Bengal of its national party status.
There has been no response from Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee or the party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee in the matter. Only senior Trinamool Congress leader Saugata Roy has claimed that the party leadership can legally challenge the ECI’s decision. He said that such instances have come to the fore in the past too, when the decision of the ECI proved to be wrong.
Roy said, the commission has also been censured by the Supreme Court many times. Apart from sending a deputation to the commission, we may also consider taking the legal route in this matter.
Opposition parties, especially the BJP, have targeted the Trinamool Congress in this matter. BJP’s national vice-president Dilip Ghosh has claimed that the commission’s action has shattered Mamata Banerjee’s dream of becoming the prime minister. Trinamool Congress’s efforts to expand its network in states like Goa and Tripura by spending crores of money earned from various scams ultimately did not fructify, BJP’s West Bengal unit president Sukanta Majumdar said.
Legal experts believe that the grounds on which the national party status of Trinamool Congress was withdrawn are so valid that there can hardly be any argument against this decision. Neither the condition of having two per cent of the Lok Sabha seats from at least three states nor of having state party status in at least four Indian states could be fulfilled by the party.
Although the Trinamool Congress has more than two percent of the total Lok Sabha seats, all of them are from West Bengal. Similarly, Trinamool has state party status only in West Bengal and Meghalaya.
Kaushik Gupta, Senior Advocate, Calcutta High Court, said the ECI’s decision to withdraw national party status not only for the Trinamool Congress but also for parties like the NCP and the CPI, appears to have been carefully crafted, hardly for rebuttal leaves some space. However, any party can challenge the decision of the commission in the court.
More problematic for the Trinamool Congress is that it will have to contest four elections in the next ten years, namely the Lok Sabha elections in 2024 and 2029 and the West Bengal assembly elections in 2026 and 2031, as a state party, as there will be no national elections in the next ten years. There is no chance for review of the list of parties.
As per the norms set by the ECI in 2016, the revision of the national party list will be done at an interval of every 10 years instead of the earlier period of five years. Therefore, by that count the Trinamool Congress will not be able to regain its national party status even if it fulfills the criteria for the same in the interim period.
According to ECI records from 2019, the Trinamool Congress had an opportunity to retain its national party status in one Lok Sabha election and 21 state assembly elections, which the party failed to utilize. This is where legal observers feel that the counter arguments against the ECI decision do not have much merit.
Political observers believe that the main issue is purely political more than legality. The Trinamool Congress will have to face the question of whether the party leadership will be able to regain its national party status with a renewed focus on states outside West Bengal, where the party is facing several headwinds in its bastion West Bengal. Has been
Political commentator Sabyasachi Bandopadhyay said, “As I see it, the Trinamool Congress faces three acid tests with state panchayat elections starting in 2023, then Lok Sabha elections in 2024 and finally state assembly elections in 2026.” Unlike the BJP, the Congress, the CPI(M) and the Aam Aadmi Party, the Trinamool Congress is in no position to focus on more than one state in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. According to him, Trinamool Congress has no chance to focus national attention till 2026.
cbt
Follow Niharika Times for all the big news from India and abroad. Like us on Facebook and Twitter . Always visit Niharika Times for latest news.