Daily Times

After the May 19 verdict, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is the biggest challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While having the potential to be his rival in the 2019 LokSabha polls, she, however, can also turn into a tactical ally of the BJP in parliament over the next two years.

Even while the results were still being tallied, Banerjee began addressing a press conference because the margin was so wide that defeat was an impossibility. Over the next couple of hours the mercurial Banerjeemade statements that would have gladdened Modi, yet leaving him a shade ruffled as well.

To begin with, let’s look at what could have worried Modi and his party, the BJP. Banerjee was asked how she saw the road ahead for herself and whether she harboured any prime ministerial aspirations. She skirted around the question but did not say that she wasn’t interested.

I was reminded of Modi when I asked him the same question in the summer of 2012. He told me that I had posed a “very loaded question.” He explained that if he replied in the affirmative, the journalist in me would read it as his anxiety and if he said “no”, it would be interpreted as weakness. “Best is,” he said, “all of you decide what you think is best for the party.”

Therefore, if after getting re-elected in West Bengal, Banerjee has thrown her hat into the prime ministerial ring, how is she also the harbinger of good tidings for Modi? For starters, she stated that her party would support the GST Bill as promised. “We have ideological differences with the BJP but we will always support it on issues that are beneficial to the people,” she said.

The statement is hugely significant because it establishes that Banerjee is keen to acquire the space of a ‘responsible opposition’ that has been vacant for a decade or more. In this avatar, the TMC leader will support the GST but will also pursue a potential position at the head of an anti-BJP coalition of regional parties.

But even this promised issue-based support to the Modi government will not be unconditional. West Bengal has assistance to seek, and for support on GST it will bargain for a package to bail out the state from the burden of debt accumulated through the years of Left Front rule.This makes the choice difficult for Modi as the more he relents on Banerjee’s demands, the stronger she becomes as the chief minister. A good run as the chief executive of the state may well give her the ability to lay claim to the same set of testimonials that Modi presented in 2014 to buttress his case as a prime ministerial candidate.

While watching Banerjee’s press conference, one could not help but recall Modi’s victory speech in Vadodara after the 2014 LokSabha elections and note the obvious contrast.

Though using the same tactics that the Left Front perfected in election after election when the coalition pounded almost every adversary into quiet acceptance of hegemony during polls, Banerjee donned the visage of sobriety. It was not the street-smart politician we know her to be celebrating an outstanding victory — like Modi did that afternoon in 2014 — but it was a quiet address of a person who has just attended a graduation ceremony and has come out with honours.Modi will find this tactic difficult to counter because it is not accompanied by hyperbole and overstatement. Banerjee made it clear that she dislikes the BJP for its Hindutva agenda, and began clearing apprehensions regarding her softness towards the party for having allied with it once.With this unequivocal rejection of the BJP’s politics of promotion of prejudice, Banerjee has taken a major step towards taking the leadership of the secular brigade.

How others react to this development, especially the Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who probably floated his candidature prematurely, will determine not just her chances but also the extent Modi bends to accommodate her demands. Like Modi, Banerjee is a tough bargainer and no one would know this better than Modi.Like Modi, she knows her terrain only too well and is aware that any dilution of her secular politics will be suicidal in West Bengal with a 27 percent Muslim population.

Banerjee knows that her possible bid for 7 RCR in 2019 will not go unchallenged. More than anyone else, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, who also came back to power in these elections, would fancy her chances as well, because over the next two years, she may also adopt the same tactics while tackling Modi.

But at 61, Banerjee is more youthful than her Tamil Nadu counterpart and also has the advantage of better personal relations with leaders of other parties.For the bulk of her political career, Jayalalithaa has displayed remoteness while interacting with leaders of other parties and also stayed confined to Chennai in recent years and this could be her undoing.

In a previous article after the exit polls, I argued that if Banerjee won the polls, she would be one of the most powerful chief ministers and a major power broker. Importantly, the West Bengal chief minister has declared her intention to campaign in Punjab for the AamAadmi Party (AAP) — “if Kejri asks me”– because he should win.

A street-smart, hungry-for-power politician, MamataBanerjee has surely begun displaying greater appetite already. She has already made her move. Other leaders are best advised to watch out for her next move.

(A version of this op-ed appeared online in daily O on May 20, 2016)

The writer is a Delhi-based author and journalist