West Bengal Congress furious with Singhvi, Sibal for defending Mamata government in court again

Putting leaders of West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee (WBPCC), particularly after their vocal criticism in the Saradha and Narada issues, lawyers and senior Congress leaders Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Kapil Sibal have once again defended West Bengal state government in the Supreme Court.

Sources said that state Congress president Adhir Chowdhury, who is overseas at present, has expressed his dissatisfaction over it and so did Congress MLA and Leader of the Opposition in West Bengal Assembly, Abdul Mannan.

Sources also said that Chowdhury had called Singhvi on Tuesday from abroad and had a word with him over the issue. “Chowdhury had told Singhvi that for his and Sibal’s actions people were sending a wrong message and Mannan had said that there is no guarantee that Singhvi will not have to face ire from party members upon his next visit to Bengal,” said a senior state Congress leader.

He said that while Congress leaders were the first one to move Supreme Court against the TMC in Saradha and other chit fund company cases, senior Congress leaders defending TMC at the apex court had been major impediments in the process. “Now Singhvi is defending the state in the Panchayat Poll case where it has been alleged that Opposition parties could not pitch their candidates owing to violence by ruling TMC,” he added.

The Bengal Congress have made their displeasure clear in the past and spoken against partnering with Mamata Banerjee in Bengal. Thus, seeing two senior Congress lawyers defend their sworn enemy in the state has only angered the local leaders. 

Earlier Chowdhury had said that Sibal would not be invited to any programme in the state put up by state Congress and later Congress MLAs had boycotted a meeting with Singhvi upon his visit to Kolkata after he was elected as the Rajya Sabha member.

It was also found out that both the heavyweight lawyers – Singhvi and Sibal – had told party central leadership what they had done was in accordance of their professional commitment.

Trouble has already started brewing in Bengal, where the state Congress has sent a report to the AICC proposing a 21-step approach on June 23, 2018 to defeat the ‘TMC-BJP’ nexus in the state, including an alliance with Left parties and a proposal to even share office space with the communists.

Even as Mamata Banerjee is seen sharing the space with Congress and other Opposition leaders in Bengaluru during Kumaraswamy’s oath ceremony, the state’s Congress remains antagonistic to the idea of going at it with TMC.

West Bengal Congress secretary OP Mishra told Indian Express: “We have sent the report to New Delhi and are awaiting a response. The main thrust of the report is to not only look at the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, but draw a long-term plan to see how we can make a recovery in the 2021 assembly elections, defeat the TMC and come to power. We are not averse to forming a coalition government with the CPM in the state.’’

The state of Congress in Bengal is a tad direr in the rest of the country and both Congress and the Left are fast losing the Opposition space to BJP in the state.

The report wants central office points in Kolkata, Asansol, Behrampore and Siliguri, a website, social media pages, and a 50,000 strong volunteer force.

The report further states: “The methodology may involve enlisting the support of 1,000 core political party activists distributed throughout the state, encouraging each of them to enlist 10 volunteers and then subsequently each of the 10,000 volunteers to help enlist 5 volunteers each. The volunteers may be supporters or sympathizers of any political party. Details related to enlisting and joining of volunteers and Dos and Don’ts related to them to be prepared in writing.”

The report further claimed there is a tacit understanding between TMC and BJP in Bengal and that that a TMC-Congress-Left tie-up would serve the BJP and they could end up ‘ceding the Opposition space to BJP’.

The report claimed: “When Congress and Left political parties reached state-level electoral understanding and contested the 2016 assembly election, securing about 39 per cent vote share, BJP’s vote share was reduced by about 40 per cent, from the high of 17.2 to 10.5 per cent. The 6 per cent gap between TMC and Congress-Left combine resulted in a huge victory for TMC which secured 211 seats. TMC leadership realized that any further strengthening of Congress-Left combine would jeopardize their electoral success and hence decided to encourage BJP’s ‘rise’.”

The state Congress had argued taht TMC had given ‘tacit and indirect support to BJP’.

With input from PTI