Mamata Banerjee’s
Trinamool Congress, the ruling party in West Bengal attempting to make a
national footprint, has decided to ally with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Pary
(MGP) in the upcoming Assembly elections in the state. Led by Sudhin Dhavilkar,
the MGP had allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the previous
elections but was unceremoniously dropped from government in March 2019 after
two MGP MLAs resigned from the party and joined the BJP.

Deepak Dhavilkar, Sudhin
Dhavilkar’s brother, made the announcement of the alliance Monday evening.
Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra, the party’s Goa in-charge, shared the stage with
Dhavilkar. Speaking on the occasion, Mahua Moitra, who is known for her fiery
speeches attacking the BJP in Parliament, said, “This alliance is a combination
of Trinamool’s fighting spirit and MGP’s deep rooted history in Goa…we believe
that the people of Goa who were looking for an alternative to get rid of the BJP
government in the state should look no further.”

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The Trinamool had
also reached out to another Goanese regional party which had allied with the
BJP but a coalition formula could not be worked out, according to an NDTV
report. The MGP-Trinamool coalition is said to be the handiwork of Luizinho Faleiro,
a former Congress leader who recently joined the Trinamool and has been given
the post of the party’s national vice-president.

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The Trinamool is on
the lookout for more local faces for the party, media reports say. Meanwhile,
the Goa Forward Party, another of the region’s significant local political
powers, has decided to ally with the Congress in the upcoming polls.

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Mamata Banerjee,
who scored a massive victory against the BJP in the West Bengal Assembly
elections, is looking to bolster her national profile and is said to be looking
to become the national face of the opposition by replacing the grand old party.
The Congress has slammed Mamata’s efforts to leave it out of the political equation
and has also accused the West Bengal chief minister of playing into the BJP’s
hands by “splitting the secular vote”.