By Tanuj Dhar
Guwahati, April 16 It was August 2021, and then Congress president Sonia Gandhi was holding a meeting at her Janpath residence in Delhi with the party leaders from Assam.
All prominent leaders from the state were present, and the Grand Old Party's position in the state was thoroughly discussed. Sonia Gandhi wanted to chalk out a future strategy for the Congress after the party faced a debacle in the assembly election.
Throughout the entire discussion, Sonia Gandhi spent most of the time interacting with Sushmita Dev to gauge the party's situation in Assam. Dev was that time the All India Mahila Congress president. None of the leaders present there could anticipate the turn of events in the next 48 hours.
The next day, news broke that Sushmita Dev had resigned from the Congress. The top leaders of the party were continuously dialling, but her phone was switched off. She was seen with Mamata Banerjee after joining the Trinamool Congress.
Although it looked sudden, Dev's bond with the Trinamool Congress (TMC) was not. The TMC's Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien had been interacting with her for quite a long time.
Actually, soon after winning Bengal for the third time in a row, TMC leaders were harbouring the expansion plan of the party at the national level. They initially targeted two states Tripura and Assam. However, in the absence of any prominent faces, there was resistance to the party's expansion plan.
Sushmita Dev, even as primarily a leader with a presence in Assam, had a deep connection with Tripura. Her father won the Lok Sabha election from Tripura and became a minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government. Being a Bengali was another advantage for Dev, and Trinamool decided to rope her in for Tripura.
Almost two years after that, the Trinamool Congress has lost badly in the Tripura election. It faced a backlash in Goa too and the Meghalaya poll results were also not as expected by the party leaders.
The latest blow to the party came a few days ago when the Trinamool Congress' national party status was scrapped by the Election Commission (EC). Political analysts have started questioning the Trinamool's national ambitions following the EC order.
Sushmita Dev told , "Our party has not backtracked on its decision to expand beyond Bengal. In Assam, we are gradually expanding our organisation."
She claimed that the politics of the BJP are driven by fear. If anybody posts anything on a social media platform, the person is arrested the next day. Criticising the government's work also invites action against the Opposition using the administrative machinery.
"In this situation, building a new organisation is a really challenging task. But I believe that Ripun Bora has been doing fantastic work and has already made breakthroughs," Dev added.
The Trinamool Congress got fewer votes than the NOTA in the Tripura election. This was also one reason why the party lost its national party status.
"Firstly, we did not contest all the seats in Tripura. We fought on only 28 seats. Moreover, due to the political violence, we faced a lot of challenges that other opposition parties did not experience. We were not allowed to open even the party offices. Nobody was giving us space for an office fearing the BJP's vendetta politics," Dev said.
She also mentioned that the Trinamool Congress has been preparing to legally fight the EC's decision.
Dev said, "If we talk about only the vote percentage, then Congress got votes less than 2 percent in the Uttar Pradesh election, and we got nearly 14 percent in the recently concluded Meghalaya polls."
"I cannot reveal much details about the legal things, however, there are enough grounds to fight the EC decision," she added.
Dev also claimed that the EC's scrapping of national status has nothing to do with the party fighting polls outside West Bengal and the Trinamool is gaining people's trust in Assam. She believes that the party should fight the Lok Sabha elections in Tripura and Meghalaya too.
Ripun Bora, the Trinamool Congress president in Assam, echoed the same thing. He said, "Fighting the Lok Sabha polls in Assam with maximum potential is our first priority. People are aligning with us. Nothing has changed following the EC's decision."
He questioned the Election Commission's move saying, "There is a provision to review the national party status after 10 years of getting it. We became a national party in 2016 and it has been scrapped after only 7 years."
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