Despite BJP’s CAA gambit, Bengal’s youngest MLA’s by-poll win gives TMC hope for a Matua turnaround

Kolkata: Madhuparna Thakur stepped into the limelight when she started a protest demonstration on May 13 after she and her mother Mamatabala Thakur, a Trinamool Congress member of the Rajya Sabha, were ‘evicted’ from the family home, allegedly by her cousin Shantanu Thakur, the local BJP MP and a Union Minister.

And, just about eight weeks later, Madhuparna won a by-poll to enter the West Bengal legislative assembly as its youngest member – a distinction that was hitherto held by late stalwart of state politics Subrata Mukherjee. The 25-year-old, who is pursuing her master's degree in botany, was the TMC’s candidate for the bye-election in Bagda, one of the assembly segments of the Bangaon Lok Sabha constituency. She beat her nearest rival Binoy Kumar Biswas of the BJP by 33445 votes, wresting the seat for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party after eight years.

Not only in Bagda, but the TMC also won in the state’s three other assembly constituencies, where polling for the bye-election was held on Wednesday. Krishna Kalyani and Mukutmani Adhikari, who switched over to the TMC from the BJP, won in Raiganj and Ranaghat Dakshin constituencies with margins of 50,077 and 39,048 votes against the BJP candidates. Supti Pande, the wife of the late TMC heavyweight and a collegemate of Mamata Banerjee, won in Maniktala, beating her nearest rival, Kalyan Chaubey of the BJP, by 62,312 votes.

Like the recent Lok Sabha polls, the candidates of the CPI(M) and the Congress could not make a mark in the bye-elections to the state assembly too and ended up losing deposits in two of the four constituencies.

The victory of Madhuparna in Bagda is particularly significant for the TMC as it indicated that the party could make a dent in the BJP’s support base among the Matuas, a Hindu sect that traces its roots to a reformist movement launched by Harichand Thakur at Orakandi in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in the early 19th century. The sect comprises Namashudras, Chamars, and Malis, who had been treated as untouchables by the upper caste Hindus of undivided Bengal. To escape religious persecution, a large number of Matuas relocated to West Bengal and other parts of India over the decades, beginning with the Partition of 1947. They now account for nearly 17% of the population of West Bengal and can influence the poll results in at least 10 Lok Sabha constituencies in the State.

Madhuparna’s father, late Lok Sabha member Kapil Krishna Thakur, was a descendant of the founders of the sect. Kapil’s widow Mamatabala now leads one of the two warring factions of the All India Matua Mahasangha, the apex body of the sect while his brother Manjul Thakur’s sons Shantanu and Subrata lead the other. Shantanu had been re-elected to the Lok Sabha from Bangaon, a parliamentary constituency that includes the assembly segment of Bagda. He beat the TMC’s Biswajit Das with a margin of over 73000 votes, obviously due to the overwhelming support from the Matuas, who saw in the Union Government’s move to frame rules for implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) hope for an end to their identity insecurity.

Though the BJP has been trying to woo the Matuas with the CAA, Madhuparna’s victory in Bagda and Adhikari’s in Ranaghat Dakshin, which also has among the electorate a large number of Matuas, indicated that the TMC is regaining its support of the community just a month after a large number of them reposed faith in the BJP in the parliamentary elections. Adhikari had also contested the parliamentary polls as the TMC’s candidate in the Ranaghat LS constituency, which includes the Ranaghat Dakshin assembly segment. He had lost to the BJP’s Jagannath Sarkar in the Lok Sabha polls. Sarkar had got a lead of nearly 37000 votes in Ranaghat Dakshin. The assembly by-poll however saw a turnaround and Adhikari got a margin of over 39000 votes in Ranaghat Dakshin.

The by-poll victories raised the TMC’s strength in the 294-member state assembly to 215. The party also has the support of three other MLAs, who have defected from the BJP but have not yet resigned from the state assembly. The BJP's tally in the state assembly has come down to 71 from 77 in 2021. The saffron party, which had high ambitions in West Bengal, could win only 12 LS seats from the state, six less than its 2019 tally.

“We thank the people for their faith in us, first in Lok Sabha elections and now in assembly by-polls. Our responsibility to the people has also gone up. We have to rededicate ourselves to the service of the people” Banerjee, the TMC supremo, said after her party’s impressive victory in the state assembly bye-elections.

The BJP, however, alleged that the ruling TMC had not allowed free and fair polling during the bye-elections. "We will review our performance. But the TMC did not allow free and fair elections and there were a lot of irregularities. The ruling party had unleashed a reign of terror,” BJP’s spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP, Samik Bhattacharya, said.