KOLKATA: Since Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is fast coming out as the key face of the opposition for the 2024 polls, two questions are floating surrounding the political circles and the corridors of power in West Bengal.

Will Trinamool Congress leader and West Bengal's chief minister Mamata Banerjee be able to free her party from the myriad of crises it is currently experiencing and become a significant figure in establishing the opposition's parameters at the national level for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections? Will she accept Nitish Kumar as the preferred opposition figure? Mamata Banerjee mentioned the need for opposition unity against the BJP in 2024 when speaking to party members and leaders on Thursday afternoon in Kolkata, but she did not make it clear whether she would accept Nitish Kumar as the main opposition figure.

"We are Nitish Kumar, Hemant Soren, and Akhilesh Yadav. You'll quickly observe that other people will be unified as well. The 2024 match will kick off in West Bengal "She spoke. It's interesting to note that she left Congress off of the list.

Dilip Ghosh, national vice-president of the BJP and a member of the party, believes that the Trinamool Congress cannot realistically hope to play a significant role in the removal of the saffron party from power in New Delhi given the current political climate. Instead, Ghosh advised that she focus on maintaining her position as chief minister till the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The CPI(M) leadership believes that since the Left Parties in Bihar already support the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal alliance government there, recognising Nitish Kumar as the key opposition figure in 2024 is not a problem for them.
On September 6, Kumar and Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the CPI(M), stated that their main goal right now is to bring together all of the opposition parties, including the Congress and other local parties. With the exception of the Trinamool Congress, all of the regional parties that Kumar claimed to be in contact with were present.

In spite of holding separate meetings with politicians like Rahul Gandhi of the Congress, Arvind Kejriwal of the AAP, Sitaram Yechury of the CPI(M), and K Chandrasekhar Roy of the TRS, the Bihar chief minister has yet to meet with Mamata Banerjee or any other member of the Trinamool Congress.

Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay, a political analyst, claims that the Trinamool Congress's stance in the most recent elections for Vice President and President has isolated both the party and Mamata Banerjee at the federal level.
"She ran Yashwant Sinha, national vice-president of her party, against Droupadi Murmu, the NDA candidate, in the presidential elections. She then stated in public that she could have considered supporting Murmu had the BJP notified her about her candidacy sooner. Her party did not participate in the vice president election, which paved the way for Jagdeep Dhankhar, a candidate for the NDA and a former governor of West Bengal, to win. Trinamool Congress has become more marginalised in the national opposition space as a result of all of these. It is no longer able to set the rules. Therefore, Mamata Banerjee will have to accept Nitish Kumar if he ends up being predicted to be the main opposition figure in the 2024 elections, or else she risks furthering her isolation" he added.

On August 30, when a leader of the Aam Aadmi Party criticised the Trinamool Congress over the latter's handling of the central agency probes, it became clear that the Trinamool Congress was becoming increasingly marginalised on a national level.

Arnab Moitra, the party's state spokesman, told reporters that the difference between the two parties is that AAP leaders do not seek refuge in hospitals when they are being pursued by government agencies like the CBI or ED. He was making a direct reference to the powerful Trinamool Congress officials who, whenever they were being pursued by the government, either sought refuge there or attempted to do so in the Woodburn Ward of the state-run SSKM Medical College & Hospital in Kolkata.

Another political analyst, Rajagopal Dhar Chakraborty, claims that Mamata Banerjee's arch rivals in West Bengal, the CPI(M) and the Congress, have been given more room to continue their old campaign of portraying Banerjee as a covert agent of the BJP by the Trinamool Congress' stance on the presidential and vice presidential elections.

"It appears that the other regional parties have begun to support this specific effort. In such a scenario, I do not see any chance for Trinamool Congress to be able to dictate terms in the opposition space before the 2024 elections, instead choosing to support any widely recognised face, be it Nitish Kumar or anyone else, in 2024" he said.

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