That you cannot confront your enemies while marginalising your friends is the lesson that Union Railways Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee should draw from the Siliguri mayoral election. In a local development that has jolted West Bengal’s polity and made headlines nationally, the Congress successfully grabbed the Siliguri Municipal Corporation, with the help of the Left Front, against its ally Trinamool. Coming in less than five months after the Congress-Trinamool alliance trounced the Left in the Lok Sabha polls and about a couple of weeks after it smashed the Left’s 28-year-old citadel of north Bengal by winning the Siliguri civic election, this event is a strategic dilemma for the alliance in the garb of a tactical manoeuvre. Notwithstanding the drama, and the fact that political adjustments at the municipal level can be extremely localised, the writing on the wall says that politics is a constant flux, where intransigence does not pay.

It is important to read between the lines — of Congress explanations, of Mamata Banerjee’s resurrected accusations against the Congress, of the CPM’s stated motives — and tread the thin line between reading too much and too little into the affair. As such, it does not affect the larger Congress-Trinamool alliance yet. But it can, if Banerjee is to persist in insisting the Congress play second-fiddle to her everywhere in the state, all the time. It can, if state Congress leaders become too adventurous after sending her this loud warning. It, after all, damages the morale of state Congress workers if the party gets no political space and voice of its own. As far as calculations go, the Congress would like to use Siliguri to bargain harder for seats in next year’s civic polls, which include the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, and in the 2011 assembly election. For the Left, it would be immensely rewarding to drive a wedge between the Congress and Trinamool — certainly for those assembly polls, the prospect of which has been making it anxious ever since May.

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