It's BJP vs TMC in the battle of Bengal

BJP is making a determined bid to wrest Bengal from Mamata Banerjee

A flustered Union Home Minister Amit Shah flew into Kolkata last Tuesday to hold an urgent meeting with Bengal BJP leaders. He had been forced to change his schedule for the day by a massive uproar of disgruntled party leaders and workers over candidate selection. BJP workers from at least 13 Assembly constituencies had gheraoed the party office in the Hastings area of Kolkata, demanding that the party change the candidates it had selected to field in those constituencies in the eight-phase Assembly election that starts on March 27. The workers even pelted stones at the party office.

Sources in the BJP said that during the meeting, which continued into the early hours of Wednesday, an annoyed Shah asked the state party leaders why there was so much discontentment over candidate selection and whether they had any clue about the situation. Shah instructed them to immediately hold discussions with disgruntled party leaders and workers and resolve the issues.

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The episode points to the problem at the core of the BJP’s determined campaign to unseat Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) and rise to power for the first time in a state in which it was no more than a fringe element until the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The scale of BJP’s effort can be gauged from the fact that it won just three seats in the last Bengal election in 2016. Now, it wants to hit the halfway mark in the state’s 294-seat Assembly.

It has laid out the ground well, doing what the BJP does best -- polarising the state between Hindus and Muslims, painting Mamata Banerjee as a Muslim-appeaser and as a chief minister failing Bengal due to corruption and nepotism – with a heavy-duty, shrill campaign and a matching social media blitzkrieg and reality-distorting hype. But it has found that it has a major problem – it doesn’t have enough bricks to build its dream castle on top of that well-laid ground of polarisation. That is, it does not have enough leaders of stature that it can field throughout the state.

The BJP has tried to solve this problem by engineering a series of defections from the TMC and other parties and fielding those candidates, even fielding the party’s MPs from the state to compensate for its lack of candidates and vote managers. But in doing so, it has created for itself problems with the party’s own leaders and grassroots workers. Many of those party workers have come to the BJP camp after having been on the other side of the political spectrum and having been disillusioned by the Left and defeated by the TMC, against which they have fought bitterly, even violently. For the BJP to expect those grassroots workers to gel with the leaders imported from the TMC is like trying to mix oil and water.

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Strong Campaign

The BJP knows that its weak booth-level organisation and lack of strong candidates makes it heavily dependent on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the face of a prominent face in Bengal that it can put up as chief ministerial candidate against Mamata Banerjee, and on polarising the voter.

However, the BJP’s main weapons of polarisation, namely the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) have of late been put on the backburner. BJP leaders such as Shah and party president J P Nadda have been dodging questions on the implementation of the CAA, only saying that the framing of the rules under the Act had been delayed due to the pandemic.

Yet, the saffron party has not totally given up on its tactics. It is seeking to consolidate Hindu votes in its favour by accusing Mamata Banerjee and the TMC of appeasement politics. It has deployed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to target Mamata on this issue. Adityanath has taken repeated jibes at the TMC supremo for reciting Sanskrit slokas and visiting temples, claiming that it is the rise of the BJP that has put the fear of Hindu gods in Mamata’s mind. If BJP comes to power in Bengal, it would shut down all ‘illegal’ slaughter houses, he promises at rallies, using a tactic that has worked well for him and the BJP in the Hindi-belt states.

Also read: BJP biggest extortionist in the world, should never be allowed to rule Bengal, says Mamata Banerjee

Indeed, in a bid to counter the BJP’s hardcore brand of Hindutva, Mamata has had to put on display her ‘Hinduness’ on the BJP’s terms, seen in her repeated references to scriptures, Sanskrit slokas and frequent visits to temples and offering prayers during campaigning.

In Nandigram on March 9, she recited Sanskrit slokas on stage at a party workers’ meeting, and then went on to say “Ask them (BJP) to compete with me on knowledge of Hindu religion” rather than playing the “Hindu card” to win elections.

But the BJP has another card up its sleeve that it has so far used well against the Congress – charging the opponent with ‘dynastic politics.’ Its target in Bengal is Mamata’s nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, whom it has repeatedly sought to paint as corrupt without ever directly naming him, but only referring to him as “bhaipo” (nephew). Phrases such as “Bhatija kalyan” (welfare of the nephew) have become a constant taunt in the speeches of Modi, Shah and Nadda.

One has to keep in mind that several TMC turncoats such as former minister Suvendu Adhikari and a host of MLAs have switched to BJP in protest against the rise and influence of Abhishek in the party.

The Matua factor

Despite its organisational flaws, the BJP has an edge over TMC in 68 constituencies reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC). In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP got 44.07% of votes in seats reserved for SC candidates, compared to TMC’s 43.93%. While the TMC got a lead in 34 Assembly seats reserved for the SC, the BJP led in 33 seats in the Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP also led in 13 of the 16 Assembly seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the LS elections. It has a clear advantage in North Bengal, where it won all eight Lok Sabha seats. The TMC has an edge in terms of organisational clout and the minority vote base. Even in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, despite the BJP’s record success of winning 18 seats in Bengal, TMC led in 98 of the state’s 130 minority-dominated Assembly constituencies while BJP led in 34 such constituencies.

Both parties are also trying to woo specific caste groups, a political phenomenon that was not prominent in Bengal earlier. TMC started wooing the Matua community ahead of the 2011 Assembly elections.

The effort paid rich dividends for the party as the Matuas voted for it in large numbers, playing a key role in its coming to power. The Matuas are Dalit Hindus who settled in Bengal in large numbers after Partition. They are significant in at least 20 Assembly seats.

Mamata Banerjee allotted Rs 10 crore for the Matua Development Board and Rs 5 crore for the Namasudra Development Board, while the BJP has sought to get the Matuas on its side by promising to give them proper citizenship documents and rights under the CAA. In the LS elections, BJP dented the TMC’s Matua vote base by fielding Shantanu Thakur, the grandson of the late Matua matriarch Binapani Devi, from the Bongaon seat, and winning it.

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However, despite Amit Shah’s efforts to keep the BJP’s Matua vote base intact for the Assembly elections with his lunch politics, there is severe discontentment in the community against the BJP over the delay and confusion in implementing the CAA.

Latching onto the opportunity, Mamata has claimed that if anyone applies for citizenship under the CAA, that person would automatically be classified as a foreigner. She argued that since the Centre is yet to withdraw the law for the NRC, it would hold the contentious exercise across the country the moment it sees fit.

In the final analysis, while the Left Front and the Congress are trying to arrest their own steady decline by entering into an alliance with the newly formed Indian Secular Front (ISF) of Abbas Siddiqui, the battle in Bengal is likely to be closely fought between the TMC and the BJP.

The TMC might have a slight edge, given that it has Mamata Banerjee while the BJP has been unable to come up with a state leader who can rival her formidable political stature and acumen. Can BJP win, nevertheless, by making it a Mamata vs Modi fight?