The 1998 Pact That Turned Mamata and BJP into Bitter Rivals
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Twenty-eight years after walking together into Parliament, Trinamool Congress and BJP now face each other as sworn enemies—making West Bengal’s next election the most acerbic yet.
By NIRENDRA DEV
New Delhi, January 9, 2026 — Time, as The Palace of Illusions reminds us, erases both sorrow and joy. Yet in West Bengal politics, memory has returned with a vengeance. As the 2026 Assembly battle approaches, the bitterness between Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and the BJP is at its peak—made sharper by an inconvenient truth: they once rose together.
In retrospect, Mamata Banerjee helped the BJP gain its first real foothold in Bengal—when the state was still a secure Left fortress. The irony is profound. Friends turned foes now trade accusations daily, but the roots of this rivalry lie in 1998, just a year after the Trinamool Congress was born.
That year, the TMC–BJP alliance stunned the Left, winning eight Lok Sabha seats with a combined vote share of 34.63%. BJP’s Tapan Sikdar humbled CPI(M) heavyweight Nirmal Kanti Chatterjee in Dum Dum by over 1.36 lakh votes. The BJP’s vote share jumped sharply, crossing 10%, while the Congress collapsed to 15.2%, reduced to a single seat.
Mamata emerged as a formidable regional leader, entered the Vajpayee Cabinet, and proved she could dismantle old political certainties. The alliance continued in 1999 and 2004, peaking at 10 seats in 1999. But 2004 changed everything. The Left returned with force, Vajpayee fell, and Mamata realised the Muslim vote remained firmly with the Communists.
Post-2002 Gujarat, she concluded that proximity to the BJP was electorally toxic. That moment marked her decisive turn toward minority-centric politics—a tectonic shift that redefined Bengal’s political grammar. By 2001, she had dumped the BJP, aligned with Congress, and captured 60 Assembly seats.
Old-timers across Purulia, Birbhum, and north Bengal recall that BJP’s rise was not accidental. Refugee politics, demographic shifts, and early inroads since 1991 had already prepared the ground. Mamata did not invent the BJP in Bengal—but 1998 opened the gate wider than ever before.
Now, 28 years later, that history has come full circle. With trust long dead and stakes sky-high, Bengal 2026 will not be about ideology alone—it will be about unfinished betrayals.
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