Will Mamata's grand show end Rahul's hope of being opposition leader? Nation at 9

Want to protest for Indian citizens in Assam? You are anti-national. Fortunately you were born in West Bengal, otherwise you would have been called intruders. Read a poem penned by Mamata Banerjee in 2018. The political tilt to it obvious, the frontiership of Bengali pride equally so. in 1977, Jyoti Basu exited India's emergency by organising a rally of anti-congress opposition leaders from across India in the brigade grounds in Kolkata. In 1996, he was the united front consensus to be pm, but his party declined. Some biographers claim that Rajiv had offered to back him as pm even before that. I will outdo Jyoti Basu's 1977 rally now says Mamata Banerjee as she gears up to make an uncloaked bid to lead the opposition against narendra modi and whip together some consensus for her to be the possible prime minister in the event modi's bjp doesn't do well at the hustings. The Abdullah's from Kashmir, Stalin from Tamil Nadu, Naidu from AP, Gowda from Karnataka are all attending her kolkata durbar and will be sitting under her banner on brigade ground tomorrow. whether they will openly back her as prime minister seems unlikely. But Mamata's aspirations are clearer than ever. The congress has deputed Mallikarjun Kharge, recently busy quelling a revolt in Karnataka, to be in attendance, Rahul and Sonia won't be. Akhilesh will be there, but not Mayawati. We've seen so many of these moves over so many decades that dissolve into nothing as soon as the real power rumble begins post the elections. When maths is all that matters, chemistry can go out of the window. But for a Bengal chief minister who has steadfastly refused to endorse rahul gandhi as a future prime minister, can she honestly expect to achieve power and defeat Modi without the congress? Will the congress see their formal rebel who destroyed their position in Bengal as a comrade in arms? Do we the Indian people deserve to know clearly who are votes will make pm? If you vote DMK in Tamil Nadu, are you actually voting for Modi, Rahul or Mamata as PM? straight questions at the heart of our democracy.