In Bengal, the Lotus will be hard for Mamata to weed out

Amid a rising BJP in the state, the Trinamool Congress is facing an exodus in the top and middle orders ahead of the Assembly elections

The battle for Bengal Assembly has never been more heated up than now. On the one side, BJP's top brass are promising a 'Sonar Bangla,' leaving no stone unturned in their campaigns to win the state. Meanwhile, Didi, on her wheelchair, has indeed brought the game on. As parties exchange jibes and fiercely fight to win the crown, the TMC has to fight the anti-incumbency sentiment as well as the BJP, one whose power seems to only grow as it paints one state after the other saffron.

The 294-seat Assembly will go to polls in eight phases beginning March 27. The last day of polling is April 29 and the votes for the state will be counted on May 2 along with Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry which are also holding elections starting March 27.

With mega rallies, a strong set of tweets, lives and a leader whose golden promises have found support in Bengal, the TMC is having to fight Operation Lotus tooth and nail to prove its campaign slogan that Bengal wants its own. From Ram, Durga, Tagore and Netaji, no icon has been left to be claimed by the parties. While TMC must fight its 'bhaipo' and 'cut money' allegations, the BJP has against it a huge population of Bengali voters, many of whom do not identify with Modi's desperate attempts at speaking Bangla.

Read | Lotus is about to bloom in West Bengal because of mud created by TMC: PM Modi

If opinion polls are to be considered, Mamata Banerjee is likely going to retain her CM chair with the Trinamool Congress expected to win around 154-164 seats in the 294-seat assembly. The BJP will likely get 102-112 seats, said the poll conducted by ABP in collaboration with CNX.

The survey showed that the TMC may get 41.53% of the total votes while the BJP is projected to get 34% votes, bringing its vote share to over 3% lesser than its 2016 tally where it won 211 seats. The poll has, however, raised the BJP's stake in the Assembly by a whopping 24%. In 2016, the BJP had won only 3 seats.

Where the battle is most intense

Nandigram is set for a high-octane battle with Mamata Banerjee deciding to contest the seat against turncoat Suvendu Adhikari, who switched over to the saffron camp in December last year. Adhikari won the Nandigram seat in the 2016 Assembly election, while another TMC candidate emerged victorious from the constituency in 2011. The Congress-Left Front-ISF alliance has chosen CPI(M) youth wing state president Minakshi Mukherjee to contest from Nandigram seat. The constituency first grabbed national headlines in the mid-2000s because of the anti-land acquisition agitation led by Mamata. The movement had played a definitive role in the political history of Bengal as it saw the rise of firebrand anti-Marxist leader Mamata Banerjee, who emerged as a giant slayer by defeating the powerful Left Front which had ruled for 34-long years. Nandigram has over 30 per cent Muslim population, which has stood solidly behind the TMC over the last decade. Both Adhikari and Mamata are closely eyeing the remaining 70 per cent, escalating the fight for Hindu votes.

Bhawanipore has remained Didi's home ground for years. In the last election, Mamata Banerjee had contested from Bhawanipore, while Nandigram was the home turf of political heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari, who recently quit the TMC and joined the BJP. This year, the TMC supremo declared that she would contest only from the Nandigram Assembly constituency and announced that senior TMC leader and Minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay will contest from Bhowanipore. The battle in the constituency is being closely watched as the feisty TMC chief will contest from Nandigram for the first time after relinquishing her Bhawanipore constituency in Kolkata.

Who are the biggest claimants in this game of thrones?

Amid a rising wave of right wing sentiment across the country and only one force to reckon with at the Centre, the Trinamool Congress has brought its entire arsenal of weaponry to ensure that it defends its turf the best way it can. Even as the party faced an exodus in the top and middle orders ahead of the Assembly elections, party supremo Mamata Banerjee has left no words unsaid to remind people that those who jumped ships were given clean chits by the party that has claimed the same leaders were involved in 'cut money' and 'tolabaji' when they were with TMC. Banerjee has been saying that the BJP is a washing machine where corrupt leaders are 'whitewashed.'

The party has fielded 50 women candidates, 42 candidates from the minority community, 79 from the SC and 17 from the ST community. About 20 to 25 incumbent MLAs have not been renominated. As many as 28 MLAs, including 19 from the TMC, and a sitting MP of the ruling camp have switched over to the BJP over the past few months. Prominent among them are heavyweight politicians and former TMC leaders Suvendu Adhikari and Rajib Banerjee, Sovan Chatterjee and Jitendra Tiwari.

Desperate to shed the tag of a "sinking ship", the TMC has upped its game with the poll slogan 'Bangla Nijer Meyeke Chai' (Bengal wants its daughter), even as it continued to play the Bengali sub-nationalism card by branding BJP as a party of outsiders.

After having a limited presence in the politically polarised state for decades, the BJP has emerged as the ruling TMCs main rival by winning 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal in the 2019 general elections. With the BJP's strength increasing in the state in the last few years, its leaders are upbeat that the party will end Mamata Banerjee's 10-year rule in the Assembly polls. However, the party has not decided on a CM face yet and that is likely to leave voters confused over the face of the leader.

Also read: BJP lists candidates for phases 3,4: Babul Supriyo to contest from Tollygunge, Rajib Banerjee from Domjur

However, both the parties seem to have endorsed a record number of turncoats this time -- triggering a wave of discontentment among their loyalists.

The TMC, in its list of 291 candidates, has fielded around 16 turncoats who were either elected representatives of other parties or had joined the TMC over the last few years.

Taking a step further, the BJP, which named 122 nominees so far, has already placed its bets on 22 defectors -- most of them TMC deserters, including former state ministers Suvendu Adhikari and Rajib Banerjee.

The CPI(M) which ruled West Bengal for a record 34 years had won only 26 seats in the 2016 state polls and was completely wiped out in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This year, the Left Front is contesting the elections in alliance with Indian Secular Front and Congress. The party has fielded young candidates from its student and youth wings and is pinning hopes on budding leaders to take on the BJP and the TMC in the 2021 Assembly elections.

Newly floated political outfit Indian Secular Front (ISF) led by Muslim cleric Abbas Siddiqui, contesting the West Bengal polls in alliance with the Left Front and Congress, has been given 30 seats by the Left while Congress has offered it seven constituencies. Of the 21 candidates, the Indian Secular Front has so far announced as part of its share of seats in the alliance, 10 are either Hindu or belong to Adivasi communities, while the rest are Muslims. The BJP and the Trinamool Congress have time and again accused the ISF of being a party playing the minority card.

Key faces

A decade after she scripted history by defeating the longest-serving democratically elected communist regime of the world, feisty TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee is once again on the threshold of a watershed moment as she faces a do-or-die battle in the Bengal Assembly elections. Stakes are high for the tempestuous TMC boss as losing the elections might put a question mark on the very existence of her "ideology-starved" party that has ruled the state since 2011, and winning it would place her in the league of leaders who have engineered the defeat of the formidable Narendra Modi-led BJP. One of the fiercest critics of the Modi brigade, Banerjee is not just single-handedly taking on the well-oiled election machinery of the BJP, but also grappling with unprecedented rebellion and exodus from her party just ahead of the elections.

TMC MP from Diamond Harbour constituency and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee wields considerable influence in the party and has been leading the TMC's counter-attack against the BJP in the run-up to the polls. The BJP has been accusing Mamata Banerjee of trying to install Abhishek Banerjee as the next chief minister. While his political career is, arguably, not influential enough to decide the fate of the election, he is among the most crucial factors for both parties.

Once part of Mamata Banerjee's close circle, Mukul Roy is the rising star of the BJP in Bengal. Political observers are of the opinion that Roy's humble beginning was somewhat similar to Banerjee's, which makes them both skilled street fighters. But a close comparison shows they are two different people who came together because of the circumstances post 1977 defeat of the Congress. Mukul Roy, who was once considered the number two in the TMC, defected to the BJP in 2017.

The BJP fielded Union Minister Babul Supriyo from the Tollygunge Assembly constituency in South Kolkata. The singer-turned-Asansol MP is one of the few celebrities that have long been associated with the BJP.

Although West Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh has made it clear that he won't be contesting the polls in West Bengal, he remains a key face among the senior BJP leaders from the state. Ghosh's name was doing rounds for the Kharagpur Sadar seat which he had won in 2016 before resigning in 2019 after getting elected to the Lok Sabha, and Gopiballupur seat. Asked whether he will take up the challenge if the party anoints him as the CM face, Ghosh had told news agency PTI he is a loyal soldier of the BJP and has always taken up the responsibilities bestowed upon him.

Mamata's confidante-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari who joined the BJP last year is pitted against the Chief Minister in Nandigram. After ending his two-decade-old relationship with TMC, the political heavyweight accused it of being a party of traitors that hs forgotten the role played by the BJP during its formation in 1998. His father Sisir Adhikari and brother Dibyendu are sitting TMC MPs from Tamluk and Kanthi Lok Sabha constituencies respectively. However, after Suvendu Adhikari quit the ruling TMC party in the state, his other younger Soumendu Adhikari also joined the BJP in January this year. The Adhikari family wields considerable influence in at least 40-45 Assembly segments in Paschim Medinipur, Bankura, Purulia, Jhargram, parts of Birbhum and areas in minority-dominated Murshidabad district.

Senior Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Rajib Banerjee in January quit the TMC and tendered his resignation as an MLA. The former forest minister, after ending his two-decade-old relationship with the TMC, said he would always value the time he spent as a member of the party. Banerjee, who wields considerable influence in Howrah, has been fielded by the BJP from the Domjur constituency.

JNU student leader Aishe Ghosh is among those whose names feature in the list declared by Left Front. Ghosh gained prominence after receiving an injury during the protests against fee hike in 2020 and has been fielded by the CPI(M) from the Jamuria constituency in Paschim Bardhaman district. Ghosh has her task cut out to win from Jamuria, where the CPI(M) had tasted success in the 2016 Assembly polls. The first sitting JNUSU functionary to fight assembly polls, Ghosh, a latecomer into politics, blossomed as the president of the union at a time when student politics saw a resurgence after Left leader Kanhaiya Kumar came into media limelight following a sedition case.

70-year-old actor Mithun Chakraborty joined the BJP at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mega rally at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata. However, West Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh has dismissed media reports that the newly inducted actor might be projected as the party's chief ministerial candidate in the state. Political experts see Mithun's induction to the party as a campaigning strategy.

Also read: Turncoats turn the tables on old-timers in Bengal polls

Dinesh Trivedi's resignation dealt yet another blow to the Mamata Banerjee camp already facing several high-profile exits. The former Union minister announced that he would be resigning from the Upper House, saying that he feels suffocated for not being able to do anything amid the growing violence and unrest in Bengal. The former TMC MP joined the BJP, accusing Mamata Banerjee of abandoning her principles and alleging that people of the poll-bound state are distressed with "violence and corruption" under her government.

Hours after the candidates' names were announced, the rift between old-timers and newcomers in West Bengal BJP came out in the open as several aspirants voiced their anguish against the party and resigned after they were denied tickets, while protests were held across the state. BJP leader and TMC turncoat Sovandeb Chattopadhyay along with his friend Baisakhi Bandyopadhyay quit the party after both of them were denied tickets. Chatterjee's constituency for several decades, Behala Purba, was given to actor-turned-politician Payel Sarkar, who joined the party a few days back.

On March 13, former union minister Yashwant Sinha, a bitter critic of PM Modi's regime, joined the TMC days. According to political observers, Sinha joining TMC might not help it win votes but his utterances against the BJP could lend weight to its offensive against the saffron party. Sinha, a senior BJP leader who was a cabinet minister of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, told reporters that democracy is in peril in the country and it is the need of the hour to ensure that TMC wins the poll with a thumping majority. According to TMC sources, Sinha might be TMC's nominee for the Rajya Sabha seat which has been vacant after Dinesh Trivedi quit his post and party to switch over to the saffron camp recently.

(With agency inputs)