The Mayoral election in the Siliguri Municipal Corporation isn’t exactly a defining political event but it’s created unprecedented buzz in the state. For the first time after they parted ways last year, the Congress and the CPM got together today to defeat Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC).

This when the Congress-TMC alliance — which trounced the Left in the Lok Sabha elections — wrested the Siliguri corporation from the CPM after 28 years.

While CPM leaders claimed they were trying to “crack” the Congress-TMC alliance, many in the Congress camp said this was only to send a message to an increasingly assertive Didi not “to take Congress support for granted.”

Hours before the Mayoral election today, the Congress circulated a note asking for support and Left leaders agreed to vote for Congress’s Gangotri Dutta who won, defeating Gautam Deb of TMC by 32 votes (15 of the Congress + 17 of the Left) to 15 (TMC 14 + One Independent who backed TMC).

Banerjee promptly revived her old slogan that the Congress was the “CPM’s B team” and charged the “Congress high command” with cutting a deal with the Left. But she was careful not to escalate the tension in New Delhi wary it could help the Left trying hard to drive a wedge in the TMC-Congress alliance.

So she refused to speak to the press here, restricting her comments to a Bengali TV channel, Star Ananda: “This could not have happened without the consent of the Congress high command. Is it possible that all the Congress members go with the CPM without the knowledge of the top leaders?” Her colleague and Mos (Rural Development) Sisir Adhikari told The Indian Express: “This helps us, it shows that the only party that can take on the Left is the TMC.”

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