Didi continues triumphant march

Mamata Banerjee’s message was unambiguous — come next year, and she would be in the chief minister’s gaddi in Kolkata. If there was any doubt about this because of Congress playing hardball, she put them to rest when her party, Trinamool Congress, emerged as the clear winner in West Bengal’s civil polls — billed as the semifinal in the run-up to the assembly polls next year — without an alliance with the Congress. This means she has forced the Congress’s hand — it will have to do business with Mamata on her terms. And the Bengal Congress leaders will have to learn to play second fiddle to the mercurial Didi. Trinamool Congress, which won 50% gram panchayats in the 2008 rural elections, is now also the single largest party in urban Bengal, including Kolkata. The Congress can ignore Mamata at its own peril as that would be risking a majority of the 42 seats in West Bengal in the next election. The jewel in Mamata’s crown was her landslide win in Kolkata — of the 141 wards, her party bagged 95 — a scoreline that perhaps even took the feisty Didi by surprise. Coming after Mamata’s stunning performance in last year’s Lok Sabha election, the civil poll results clearly show that the momentum is with her. It can be said that the Left’s 33-year lien on West Bengal can at best be extended by only one year — that is, until the next polls.