WEST BENGAL: THE POWER OF NINE
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the nine districts of south Bengal delivered 19 of 22 seats for the Trinamool Congress (TMC). In terms of assembly segments, it translated into 138 seats—two thirds of the TMC tally in the last assembly election held in 2016. Barely months from now, the party’s performance in these very districts will be critical in determining Mamata Banerjee’s fate in a ‘do or die’ electoral battle against the BJP. The nine districts are: Nadia, North 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, Kolkata, South 24 Parganas, Bardhaman, Birbhum and East Medinipur, which together hold 178 assembly seats.
Winning Bengal is still a tall order for the BJP even though the party came within sniffing distance in the last general election—its seat tally of 18 was just four shy of the TMC’s 22, and its vote share (40 per cent) just 3 percentage points behind the TMC’s 43.3 per cent. For a simple majority in the 294-member assembly, a party needs 148 seats, and going by the Lok Sabha poll results, the TMC appears reasonably wellplaced to win a third consecutive term.
In the BJP’s reckoning, though, a lot has changed since May 2019. Buoyed by the defection of TMC heavyweights like Suvendu Adhikari, who wields clout in south Bengal’s East Medinipur, Hooghly, Howrah, South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas districts as well as the tribal belt in the state’s west, and erosion in the TMC ranks at the grassroots, the BJP is confident of realising its ‘Ebar Bangla (Now Bengal)’ dream. “We have a strong line-up of heavyweights in Howrah, Hooghly, Kolkata, Birbhum and East Medinipur. At least seven MPs and 40 MLAs from the TMC, Congress and the Left are ready to join us,” claims Saumitra Khan, the BJP MP from Bishnupur.
THE ‘M’ FACTOR
More than the BJP, the threat to the TMC’s domination of Muslim strongholds comes from the likes of Abbas Siddiqui, the pirzada of Furfura Sharif shrine in Hooghly district that controls some 3,000 mosques, and Asaduddin Owaisi of the AIMIM (All India Majlise-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen). Their pitch that the TMC has had this support cheap and did precious little in return for their development seems to have found some resonance. Owaisi and Siddiqui plan to contest 50-odd seats in south Bengal, and will most likely chip away at the TMC’s support base in what used to be a secure bastion for the party.
The BJP will gleefully watch how these rival aspirants to the Muslim vote undercut each other to its advantage. Siddiqui’s conspicuous appeal with Muslims has rattled the TMC. His rallies are drawing huge crowds and he is picking on the Mamata government, rather than its principal challenger BJP, as a threat to Muslim interests. Left Front chairman Surjya Kanta Mishra has invited Siddiqui to join the Left-Congress ‘secular’ platform in his battle for the rights of the downtrodden minorities.
Across the state, there are 125 assembly constituencies where Muslims comprise 20 per cent or more of the population. Of these, North and South 24 Parganas, Nadia, Kolkata, Birbhum and Bardhaman account for 75-80 seats. In the 2016 assembly election, the TMC won 81 of these 125 seats and finished runner-up in 14. The Left and the Congress won a total of 40 seats and the BJP four. The Left-Congress was placed second in 105 seats. This should worry
the TMC, particularly if this combine manages to rope in Siddiqui.
South and North 24 Parganas, which account for 64 seats, have a heavy concentration of Muslims—35 and 26 per cent, respectively. These are also the two districts that bore the brunt of Cyclone Amphan last May, and the BJP’s tack here is to focus its door-to-door campaign on the alleged corruption and perceived injustice in the distribution of relief; ‘Aar Noi Annyay (No more injustice)’ is the slogan to go with in this line of attack.
“We are not bothering with North and South 24 Parganas as the polarisation attempt by our rivals and Siddiqui’s outfit will help consolidate the Hindu votes in our favour. As for the minority votes, we got 4 per cent in 2019, without which we wouldn’t have won seven of eight Lok Sabha seats in north Bengal,” says Diptiman Sengupta, the BJP spokesperson from north Bengal. “Even North Dinajpur and parts of Malda, with 49 and 51 per cent Muslim population respectively, voted for us. It shows that the BJP is not an untouchable for Muslims.”
But the BJP will not be seen actively courting Muslims lest it weaken the possible consolidation of Hindu votes in its favour. BJP president J.P. Nadda’s ‘Krishak Suraksha Abhiyan’ and ‘Ek Mutthi Chawal’ programme, launched in early January from Bardhaman, the state’s rice bowl, excluded 8,000 Muslim-concentration villages. The campaigns have selected 48,000 other villages across Bengal, the wider aim being to reach out to the 7 million farmer families in the state and build a strong case in favour of the contentious central farm laws that are being strongly opposed by farmers across the country. “Those who will vote for the BJP will do so for the good work PM Narendra Modi has done, such as the abolition of triple talaq and repeal of Article 370,” says Sengupta.
The real threat to the TMC’s domination of Muslim strongholds comes from the likes of Abbas Siddiqui, the pirzada of Furfura Sharif shrine, and the Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM
KOLKATA AND BEYOND
Kolkata district has always been a tricky game for parties. Even in the heyday of the Left, the district would vote for the Congress and the TMC. In the 2019 Lok Sabha poll, the metropolis remained impervious to the BJP. The party has deputed Sovon Chatterjee, the former Kolkata mayor poached from the TMC, as observer for the 11 seats in Kolkata and 31 in South 24 Parganas. Chatterjee’s clout in South 24 Parganas had helped Mamata’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee win the Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha seat in 2014. “Sovon Chatterjee’s band of followers will help the BJP in booth management and keeping a check on Abhishek’s belligerent supporters,” says a TMC leader from South 24 Parganas.
The BJP’s worry is the 1.5 million population spread across Kolkata’s 3,500 registered slums. “The TMC will use the slum residents for bogus voting and causing disturbance at booths on voting day,” claims a BJP leader.
The race for this vote-bank is taking both BJP and TMC bigwigs to their doorstep. If Nadda visited slums in Mamata’s assembly seat of Bhabanipur in December last year, the chief minister met slum-dwellers in Kolkata’s Baghbazar on January 14, following a devastating fire that gutted 150 homes and left 700 people homeless. She promised to rebuild the houses and instructed officials to provide free ration and clothing to the victims.
Hooghly, where the BJP won one of the three Lok Sabha seats and lost another by just 1,000 votes, has been witnessing rumblings in the TMC camp. Several MLAs have made their discontent apparent, including Prabir Ghosal,
a Mamata confidant for 40 years. “Even Howrah, which has 11 per cent Hindispeaking people, is changing colour,” says BJP national vice-president Mukul Roy. “Mamata Banerjee’s outsiderinsider rhetoric and contempt for ‘Jai Shri Ram’ sloganeers has already done the damage. The rest of the job will be done by defections from the TMC.”
With Adhikari in the BJP camp, the party is confident of pocketing the 16 seats in East Medinipur, and in terms of the Lok Sabha poll verdict, it secured 15-16 of the 25 assembly seats in Bardhaman. In Birbhum, which has 11 seats and a 37 per cent Muslim population, the TMC’s local heavyweight, Anubrata Mondal, has been lying low. Mondal faces allegations of involvement in illegal sand and stone mining, which are being probed by central agencies.
DOWN TO THE WIRE
Poll analyst Biswanath Chakraborty of Kolkata’s Rabindra Bharati University says a lot will depend on the parties’ choice of candidates, the issues in focus, the impact of the Siddiqui-Owaisi front and, finally, how the principal protagonists—Mamata and Modi—drive their campaigns. “In 2016, despite allegations of corruption against TMC leaders, Mamata returned to power with an impressive mandate. She was able to convince the people that voting for her meant the continuance of doles that had benefitted millions,” says Chakraborty. This time, though, a wide section of genuine beneficiaries is aggrieved about being denied state welfare due to alleged political discrimination by TMC leaders and activists, he adds.
Maidul Islam, assistant professor of political science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, argues that when it comes to dole politics, Mamata holds the edge.
“Whether it’s rations or other basic needs, Bengal’s masses cannot point a finger at the Mamata government. Predictably, her opponents are trying to shift the narrative from development through polarisation,” he says. In the past two months itself, ‘Duare Sarkar’, the government’s initiative for doorstep delivery of welfare schemes, has created some 9 million new beneficiaries.
As an RSS leader concedes, the Mamata government’s spending of Rs 12,000 crore a year on social welfare has created a strong base of committed party cadre and diehard supporters and it will be a challenge for the BJP to wean them away. Indeed, hardly any household in Bengal has not benefitted from one or more of Mamata’s 11 flagship schemes. “This has been a consistent achievement in Didi’s decade-long rule of Bengal, so we have nothing to fear,” asserts TMC Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, indicating that the ‘Ma-Maati-Manush’ government is safe. “Mamata also brought peace to the state. Without peace today, there won’t be life tomorrow.” ■
Mamata’s spending of Rs 12,000 cr a year on social welfare has created a support base that is hard to wean away