People's Democracy

TRINAMUL CONGRESS supremo Mamata Banerjee was unable to decide whether to plump for the unfamiliar slogan of "amity and concurrence" or to go in for the tried- tested-and-failed battle cry of "violence, more violence."

We are not talking about the probable political line of the beleaguered Trinamul Congress in the post-poll scenario in West Bengal. They do not have a political line as of now.

We refer specifically to the affair at the residence of one of the MPs of the party late in the evening of June 11 where some Trinamul MPs and MLAs had gathered to decide on the preference of crawling their way to the NDA over continuing to have "till-death-do-us-apart" ties with the faction-ridden Pradesh Congress.

When the pro-NDA Trinamul leaders were about to come to blows with the pro-status quo remainder of the flock, the exercising of the "choice-of-the-lesser-evil-slogan" must have loomed large in the mind of the Trinamul supremo (who had come into the meeting a mere four hours late) as fisticuffs were always a possibility in such a gathering.

Ultimately she preferred, as always, discretion to valor and chose to beat a quiet retreat out of the chaos that was developing, pausing only to lower her voice to the scribes of her choice and disclose that for the moment she "has allowed a stalemate to ensue as the best way out."

Things are not going to remain locked up in that platitudinous limbo for too long. It is learnt that while the majority of the MLAs have shown keenness to keep intact the "bond that lasts" with the Pradesh Congress, the MPs, have not kept things secret about their abject misery while being forced to remain out of the NDA.

And just to make things yet more interesting, we have the just-ejected chairman of the outfit, Ajit Panja, speaking confidently about "bringing up the Trinamul fresh off the grassroots" all by himself, and he of course has never made any secret of the fact that "it is NDA or nothing" for him, come what may.

A direct fall out of these internecine wrangling has been reflected in the sharp difference of opinion between the two Congresses over whether to contest the post of the deputy speaker in the Bengal legislative assembly with a combined effective strength of 89.

Pradesh Congress has already declared that they would boycott the election of the deputy speaker. Trinamul Congress is interested in putting up a candidate of its own. There has been a bitter slanging match about who is to be nominated as the sacrificial beast for a certain defeat - gesture and motive not being part of the Trinamul Congress, a splinter group as it is of the Pradesh Congress. Traditions, after all, do need to be upheld.