Mamata's Hindu Mahasabha choice

Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is, as they say, hunting with hounds and swimming with crocodiles.

In her own state, she is strongly courting the Muslims, who are between one-fourth and one-third of West Bengal's electorate.

Her sops for the minority community have earned her the confidence of India's top Muslim cleric Shah Imam Bukhari, the Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jam-e-Masjid.

Bukhari has gone on record to say Mamata is the 'most deserving candidate' for India's Prime Minister, though he has belatedly called on Muslims to vote for Congress to stop the 'communal forces' (read BJP) from coming to power.

Be that as it may, an undeterred Mamata Banerjee is fielding Trinamool candidates across the country, chasing a mirage that her party has the potential to emerge as a national alternative to both BJP and Congress.

In Uttar Pradesh's temple town of Varanasi, she has fielded Indira Tiwari, a former leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, a party founded by the late Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.

This is the parliament seat contested by BJP's Prime Minister candidate Narendra Modi.

Local scribes describe this as a ploy to cut into the BJP's upper caste supporters who are somewhat upset because the party has fielded a huge number of lower caste candidates from UP this time to counter two lower caste parties -- Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party and Mayawati's BSP.

Some BJP supporters in Varanasi are also upset because the party shifted out incumbent MP and senior party leader Murali Manohar Joshi, a senior minister in the Vajpayee cadinet, to make way for Modi.

Joshi is a Brahmin by caste.

Now the Trinamool candidate from Varanasi, Indira Tiwari was general secretary of the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha, a post she resigned only in February this year.

Tiwari is the daughter-in-law of veteran UP Congress leader Kamlapathi Tripathi. They are Brahmins.

Indira Tiwari makes it clear she resigned from Hindu Mahasabha only after the Trinamool approached her to contest the elections.

"I worked with Hindu Mahasabha from 2006 to February this year, when I resigned after Trinamool approached me to fight the elections," Tiwari says.

Then she makes it clear that she is fighting against Modi because the BJP is playing down the Ram Janambhoomi issue in the current poll campaign.

"I was the national general secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha and want to make it clear that the Mahasabha is a respondent in the Ram Janmabhoomi case. The BJP is taking the country for a ride on this issue. The courts have accepted that the land at Ayodhaya belongs to the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas. As an office bearer I was closely associated with that case," Tiwari said last week.

So, Tiwari remains strongly attached to the Ram Janambhoomi cause and is upset with BJP and Modi for not emphasising that cause sufficiently in its current poll campaign.

So how can be fielded for polls by Mamata, who is bitterly attacking Modi in the current election campaign, describing him as "the riot man".

But the political grapevine has it that Modi is keeping his options open to seek Mamata's support if the BJP needs numbers to form a government.

Some say even Mamata is keeping her options open.

Modi may seek support from outside from Mamata by promising her a generous financial package for West Bengal which is important for Trinamool as it heads into state elections in 2016.

Mamata's angst with the Congress and her final rupture owes much to her failure to extract such a package from Manmohan Singh.

So the question now asked is whether someone like Indira Tiwari has been fielded to cut Modi's votes or build a bridge to the BJP in case it emerges as the party to form the government.