Mamata Banerjee's challenge needs no Congress reaction, for now

She has adopted a 'scorched earth' strategy for building the TMC into a national party. Can an anti-Congress stance, fueled purely by personal ambition, appeal to the public imagination?

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took on the Congress in Goa to show that she was an emerging force nationally, hoping to defeat it electorally. Her calculations floundered when Vijay Sardesai’s Goa Forward Party refused to merge with her Trinamul Congress (TMC) and preferred to ally with the Congress.

However, her new confrontationist attitude towards the Congress has not ended. She is now apparently being advised to contest all the seats in Uttarakhand, if not to win, then to defeat the Congress. The calculation is that the defeat of the Congress in the five state elections will open up