Mamata Banerjee's Northeast Outreach Set To Meet Its Foil: Himanta Biswa Sarma

GUWAHATI: The Trinamool Congress aided by political strategist Prashant Kishor, are pulling out all stops to expand the Trinamool's footprints in north-eastern India.

Top Trinamool leaders told a nation media that Prashant Kishor did some plain speaking and told Mamata Banerjee that she does not have any political capital in central, north, west or south India.

"The national political arena is packed with seasoned, astute and Machivellian politicians who can easily outfox didi (Banerjee) and give her a good run for her money. They will not concede an inch of space to her on the national stage. Hence, she was told that her best chance would be to foray into the north-eastern states and tie up alliances with other parties at the national level," a senior non-Bengali Trinamool leader told the nation media.

Due to opposition in Tripura which is nowhere Trinamool now wants to occupy this opposition space and had started building the party unit in that state with defectors from the Congress and also the Left.

The national media has claimed that Mamata Banerjee has deployed huge resources in the north-eastern state.

The national media said that in the coming 1.5 years, Tripura will witness the political battle hotting up with the Trinamool pulling out all stops to make a mark in Tripura and the BJP resisting the Trinamool with all its might.

The Trinamool is also trying very hard into the Barak Valley populated by Bengali Hindus and Muslims.

The Trinamool no longer has any organisational structure or base in Manipur, but it is planning to rebuild the party in that state by engineering defections of workers and functionaries from the Congress.

"In 2012, the Trinamool managed to win seven seats because there was no strong opposition to the Congress then and the opposition space was splintered. The Trinamool projected itself as a strong and viable opposition. But the defection of its MLAs left the party in shambles and the final nail in its coffin was the defection of its lone MLA (Tongbram Robindro), who was also the president of the Trinamool state unit, to the BJP a few months after the 2017 polls," Th. Koijam, a senior Congress leader, told the national media.

In the report published by the national media has said the entry of Trinamool Congress may be the reason of powerful roadblock in the form of regional strongman Himanta Biswa Sarma.

Sarma is considered to be a shrewd politician and also possesses excellent organisational skills and has vast resources at his command.

The Assam chief minister has strong grassroots connections all over the region and is an excellent orator. Sarma is also an aggressive politician who will not concede any corner to the Trinamool which is nothing but an 'outsider' in the north-eastern political arena.

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