ON THE WARPATH
The BJP is doing its damnedest to unsettle and discredit Mamata Banerjee in the run-up to the assembly election next year. The Bengal chief minister must also deal with malcontent in her own party
With elections up in 2021, the BJP is doing its damnedest to unsettle Mamata Banerjee. She also has to deal with TMC dissidents
On June 5, World Environment Day, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee visited a wellknown park in Kolkata to plant a neem sapling and announce a big afforestation drive—of 50 million mangrove saplings—in the Sundarbans, ravaged by Cyclone Amphan late last month. Bringing up the cyclone served another purpose. In its single-minded quest for power in Bengal, the BJP, she raged, was politicising even natural calamities like Amphan and great adversities like the COVID-19 pandemic. “While we (her party, the Trinamool Congress) are labouring to save people, one political party is busy canvassing to overthrow our government,” she said, adding, for good measure, “Am I saying Narendra Modi should be thrown out of [power in] Delhi? This is not the time for politics.”
But that, political observers in Bengal will confirm, is a defensive political counter to the BJP, now her main adversary in the state. The BJP, which took 18 of 42 Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 general election, is a clear threat to Mamata’s prospects of extending her tenure in power. The party has been quick to seize on Mamata’s discomfiture, as her administration struggles with the twin big blows dealt by the coronavirus pandemic and Cyclone Amphan. Hemmed in by criticism from the BJP over her government’s alleged mishandling of the crises,
the chief minister is looking highly vulnerable. “Mamata faces an enormous challenge from the BJP in the coming election, less than a year away. Her nervousness is understandable,” says Prasanto Ray, political analyst and professor emeritus at Kolkata’s Presidency University.
HIGH-PITCHED BATTLE
But no one expects Mamata, the feisty street-fighter politician, of taking any of this lying down. The TMC chief has launched an all-out perception war against the BJP. “We are reaching out to the people, first through social media and then in small teams, to convey how the BJP is playing politics over human tragedies while the TMC is on the ground helping people,” said Rajib Banerjee, Bengal minister for forests.
Mamata is conjuring up an image of the BJP as a ‘power-hungry invader’ that will destroy Bengal’s culture and its secular outlook if it grabs power. She warned Union home minister Amit Shah it would be a mistake to eye the state as one of the BJP’s many political conquests. “You (Amit Shah) have conquered a lot, the government of India, so many states… but don’t think so narrowly about Bengal. It’s a magnanimous place. If you love Bengal, the people of Bengal will love you back,” she said.
Mamata’s tactic, according to Ray, is to project the BJP as an outsider trying to destroy Bengal’s distinctive cultural ethos. “With her assertions about Bengal being an intellectual hub, she is cautioning the educated Bengali middle class that a party of the Hindi heartland is threatening to radically alter the state’s culture. Some of this has been in evidence in the Ramnavami and Hanuman Jayanti celebrations, and the incident in May last year, when a bust of social reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar in Kolkata was vandalised,” he says.
Appealing to provincial sentiment, Mamata reckons, might counter the BJP’s time-tested ploy of polarising the electorate ahead of elections. It has done this with impunity in election after election, including the 2019 Lok Sabha, when it managed to garner a 40 per cent vote share—not only its best showing yet in Bengal but also just four seats less than the TMC. This performance, the BJP believes, will give it an edge in over 120 of the 294 assembly segments in the 2021 state election.
That the BJP is determined to pursue its polarisation campaign is evident. It has been accusing Mamata of being lax with the Covid lockdown enforcement in the Muslim-dominated areas of Kolkata and concealing data on Tablighi Jamaat returnees from a March congregation in Delhi that reported a major Covid outbreak. Mamata has dubbed this a malicious campaign against the people of Bengal. Alleging biased media coverage of Amphan, she said at the June 5 event: “It’s all on Delhi’s (Centre’s) prodding—disrespect only Bengal, deprive only Bengal, malign only Bengal.”
BJP sympathisers, however, say Mamata’s game plan will not cut ice with the electorate. “Mamata Banerjee is crafting a ‘Bangali-jagaao (awaken Bengalis)’ narrative, but the people have seen for themselves how she handled Covid and Amphan. Will they forget how they had to go without
“Where are the rumblings? The TMC has 35 MPs and 215 MLAs. Just one MLA (Sadhan Pande) made a statement out of line”
— DEREK O’BRIEN TMC leader in Rajya Sabha
power and water for 100-160 hours after Amphan? Will migrants forget the unhygienic quarantine centres? Will relatives of the Covid deceased forget how they were kept in the dark?” asks Mohit Ray, visiting professor at Jadavpur University and member of the state BJP’s refugee cell.
THE WAR WITHIN
It’s not just a strident BJP at its gates, the TMC is also dealing with internal rumblings. Party veteran and consumer affairs minister Sadhan Pande last month publicly criticised former Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim over poor planning and relief in the aftermath of Amphan. Hakim, who is now chairman of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s board of administrators, is considered one of Mamata’s favourites. Pande’s remark that Hakim should have consulted former city mayor Sovan Chatterjee, a TMC rebel who defected to the BJP last August, not only caused consternation within the TMC but was also considered a challenge to Mamata.
Slapped with a show-cause notice by the party, Pande was defiant. “I have been in politics for the past 40 years and with Mamata Banerjee even before the TMC was formed. How can someone (Sudip Bandyopadhyay) suspended for anti-party activities in 2004 send me a show-cause notice?” he asked.
Pande isn’t the only one to speak out. On June 5, panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee targeted Manturam Pakhira, junior minister for Sundarbans affairs, for poor relief and rehabilitation in the cyclone-ravaged areas. Many TMC ministers are also unhappy with the government’s handling of the Covid crisis, particularly the confrontational stance taken against the inter-ministerial central team (IMCT) that visited the state in April and the alleged underplaying of Covid deaths by citing comorbidities.
Rajib Banerjee conceded that all this mudslinging would “harm the TMC” at a time when there was no dearth of enemies outside. However, Derek O’Brien, the TMC’s leader in the
Rajya Sabha, dismissed reports of a rebellion in the ranks. “The TMC has 35 MPs and 215 MLAs. Just one MLA (Pande) made a statement out of line. So where are the rumblings?” he asked.
Amid the speculation on Pande’s next move, a state BJP leader said the party had “no immediate big plans” for him and that it was he who “needed cover given his daughter’s association with Rose Valley (a chit fund company)”. Rose Valley is facing a probe by central agencies over an alleged Rs 40,000 crore fraud. Pande may not be a prime pick, but the BJP knows its ‘Ebar Bangla (Now Bengal)’ campaign could do with some influential TMC faces. In the run-up to the Lok Sabha poll, the BJP had got five TMC leaders to defect; three of them even won seats. “We will go by the winnability factor while picking [assembly poll] candidates. If this requires poaching, we’ll not hesitate,” says a BJP leader from North Bengal.
Among the TMC big guns the BJP has set sights on is Suvendu Adhikari, the transport minister. Adhikari enjoys a strong base in rural Bengal, is a mass leader and an eloquent orator. “He will be a prize catch for the BJP,” says a TMC MP, on condition of anonymity. “Mamata Banerjee has got wind that Adhikari has made up his mind to defect, so she has begun divesting him of key responsibilities.”
Reached for comment, Adhikari was curt: “Is there any proof? I don’t answer hypothetical questions.” His father, Lok Sabha MP Sisir Adhikari, however, issued a forthright denial. “Why should we join the BJP? There can be a clash of personalities and egos, but we are loyal to the leadership,” he said. A wary Mamata, though, has retrieved charge of five of seven districts from Suvendu—Malda, South Dinajpur, West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura. These have been reassigned to leaders close to Mamata’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee.
Adhikari and Banerjee are adversaries. The former’s estrangement is believed to have started with Abhishek’s meteoric rise in the TMC and his decision to rope in poll strategist Prashant Kishor last year to boost the party’s prospects in the assembly election. Adhikari boycotted Kishor’s March 2 TMC meeting in Kolkata for which barcoded entry cards were issued—a move aimed to detect absentee leaders.
“The season of defections to the BJP has begun,” claims Dilip Ghosh, president of the Bengal BJP. “We don’t need to poach. Leaders are dumping the TMC as the party is on its way out.”
Education minister Partha Chatterjee, however, affects optimism that Mamata’s popularity will win the day for the TMC. “People vote for Mamata Banerjee and the TMC, so leaders joining or leaving the party make little difference,” he says. Mamata, on her part, is doing everything to endear herself and her party to the people. She has asked TMC leaders not to interfere with the distribution of cyclone relief. The government, she says, has made direct cash transfers of Rs 1,000 each to 450,000 returning migrant workers and released Rs 6,250 crore in nine districts towards cyclone relief and reconstruction. “Our focus is to overcome the twin challenges of Covid and the cyclone. If the BJP’s priority is to indulge in politics and electioneering, that’s their prerogative,” says O’Brien. ■
Among the TMC big guns the BJP has set its sights on is transport minister Suvendu Adhikari (above), a mass leader with a strong base in rural Bengal