By Ronojoy Sen
Both before and during the never-ending election campaign the BJP had identified West Bengal as one state where it could considerably increase its seat share. Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the fag end of the campaign somewhat surprisingly declared that the BJP would get it most success in West Bengal. Home Minister Amit Shah had also asserted that that the BJP would win between 24 and 30 of the 42 seats on offer in the state. However, the final results showed that that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) had won 29 seats, up by seven, from 2019 compared to the BJP’s 12 seats, which was down by six. The Congress won one seat.
The results were very different from what the exit polls had forecast with one predicting between 26-31 seats for the BJP and 11-14 for the TMC. Indeed, TMC chief Mamata Banerjee had publicly rubbished the exit polls findings saying that the actual results would prove the pollsters wrong. The results were also divergent from the close contest that most pre-poll surveys had predicted.
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The TMC largely retained the seats it had won in 2019, but also made inroads into areas where the BJP had won earlier. This was reflected in the rise of TMC’s vote share from 43 per cent to 46 per cent. In north Bengal, where the BJP had seven of its eight Lok Sabha seats, the TMC won Cooch Behar by defeating Union minister Nisith Pramanik. Another seat in the region, Maldaha Dakshin, was retained by the Congress. In the Jangalmahal region, where the BJP had won four seats in 2019, the party suffered a jolt. This time the BJP could retain only two of the seats: Bishnupur and Purulia. In south Bengal, the BJP retained the Bangaon and Ranaghat seats, where the Matua community is present in large numbers, but lost seats such as Medinipur and Hooghly. The only additional seats it could win in this region were Kathi and Tamluk, both of which are considered former TMC leader and BJP’s local face of the campaign Suvendu Adhikari’s stronghold. In Kathi, Suvendu’s brother Soumendu won while in Tamluk the controversial retired judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay got victory.
What were the reasons behind the TMC significantly increasing its seat share and the BJP’s steep decline? A few factors can be identified. First, though Modi was seen as the BJP’s trump card that might have paradoxically been the party’s Achilles heel. By some estimates, Modi visited the state over 20 times during the campaign period, possibly the most for any state. The repeated visits and the BJP’s seeking of votes in his name meant that the local party organization largely played second fiddle. As it happened in many parts of India, Modi’s charisma failed to attract voters in West Bengal in the manner it had done in the 2019 elections.
Modi’s efforts to bring national issues to the fore also seemed to have failed to connect to the voters. In contrast, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s campaign was built around local issues and the welfare programmes that the state government had put in place. In particular, Mamata’s welfare benefits for women, such as Lakshmir Bhandar, continued to have resonance among women voters. The scheme provides eligible women with a monthly financial assistance. Besides, Modi’s divisive campaign consolidated the Muslim vote, which has backed TMC in the past few elections both at the national and state elections, but was unable to consolidate the Hindu vote.
Second, making Suvendu Adhikari the face of the local campaign backfired for the BJP. This made it difficult for the BJP to distinguish itself from the TMC, particularly on issues such as corruption and violence, since Adhikari himself has corruption allegations against his name and has a strongman image. The elevation of Adhikari in the BJP’s ranks created internal discontent too. Adhikari was responsible for sidelining of long-time party members like former BJP state president Dilip Ghosh, who was moved from Medinipur constituency he had won in 2019, to Bardhaman-Durgapur where he lost to TMC’s Kirti Azad by over 100,000 votes.
Third, issues like the Citizenship Amendment Act did not get the traction among Hindu migrants from Bangladesh that the BJP had expected. Similarly, the violence, allegedly perpetrated by TMC leaders against women in Sandeshkhali in south Bengal, had been played up by the BJP in their campaign. However, it also did not prove to be a big vote getter for the BJP. Indeed in Basirhat, where Sandeshkhali is located, the TMC’s Nurul Islam beat the BJP’s Rekha Patra, who was one of the victims in Sandeshkhali, by a margin of over 300,000 votes.
The Lok Sabha results will provide a huge fillip for Mamata in her bid to retain the state in the Assembly elections in 2026. The BJP for its part will have to go back to the drawing board.
The writer is Senior Research Fellow, National University of Singapore, and author of 'House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy'.
Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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