How Mamata Banerjee overcame anti-incumbency and resentment against TMC to forge a historic win in West Bengal

West Bengal Assembly Election 2021 Result LIVE Updates | Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC) has pulled ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

2 May, Didi Gayi (May 2, Didi is leaving) and 200 Paar (we will cross 200 seats) – Mamata Banerjee has answered these war cries from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) top leaders decisively. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) is on course for a historic win in the state with over 200 seat leads so far, a win that will impact national politics in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

On the face of it, TMC had its back to the wall this time. There was public resentment and anger against the party on issues of cut money, corruption and lawlessness. Many senior party leaders deserted her for BJP. But TMC managed to turn the sentiment around by projecting Banerjee as a sole woman fighting the ‘big BJP men from Delhi’, invoking Bengali pride, and the insider-outsider card, thus rallying women and Muslim voters in its favour.

BJP, which had the momentum in Bengal since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, failed to tap the anti-incumbency sentiment against Banerjee given a sheer lack of organisation on the ground. As a result, the party, which led in 121 assembly segments in Bengal in 2019 and thought the anti-incumbency push will take it beyond 147-mark, has dropped below 90 seats now.

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Turning Points

There were two clear turning points in the election.

One, was Banerjee’s injury sustained in Nandigram on March 10 after which she began her campaign in a wheelchair and blamed the BJP for her injury. Though the BJP made light of her injury as a “sympathy-gaining drama”, the image seems to have worked on the ground especially among women voters. TMC projected Banerjee as ‘the fighter Didi’, the one who was under attack. The iconic image of her sitting alone on a dharna in Kolkata for several hours after a one-day ban by the Election Commission further reinforced the perception that she was under attack from all sides and had been left alone.

In an interview with News18 last month, TMC senior leader Sovandeb Chattopadhyay had said the Prime Minister’s ‘Didi-O-Didi’ remark was a “nasty comment unacceptable to women and the results would prove how women have rallied behind Banerjee.”

BJP, which made some big promises for women and girls in its manifesto, was not able to communicate them on the ground due to lack of organisation. Moreover, Banerjee’s existing women-focused welfare schemes such as Kanyashree still rung a bell. Women voters across religious lines seem to have voted for her.

The second major turning point was the Sitalkuchi firing incident during the 4^th phase of polling when central security forces killed four Muslim boys in poll-related violence. This incident gave Banerjee a chance to rally the Muslim voter behind her and she went to Sitalkuchi to give the message that she was sole saviour of Muslims.

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In doing so, the impact of the Left-Congress-ISF in Muslim-dominated districts like Malda, Murshidabad and Dinajpur was completely negated and TMC has won a record number of seats in these districts. In fact, a tape released by the BJP of a conversation between the CM and the TMC candidate in Sitalkuchi to “play politics over the bodies”, as BJP described it, only worked in the favour of TMC. The latter’s message reached the Muslims that voting for the Third Front meant bringing in BJP into the state.

News18 has learnt that the Congress’s disappearance from the campaign in Malda, Murshidabad and Dinajpur subsequently, where it had won 26 seats in 2016, also seemed some sort of tacit understanding between TMC and Congress top brass to avoid a division of Muslim votes. The Congress is presently ahead in just one seat in Bengal while the Left and ISF are decimated. The Congress in fact seems to have done the biggest favour it could to TMC by stepping out of the picture in these districts as BJP was depending on the Third Front to hurt Banerjee here.

Lack of Organisation, no CM face

BJP has claimed that it has committees on 85 percent of the booths in the state and had made rapid progress in building up its organisation in Bengal. However, this did not reflect in the villages where an odd-BJP flag and poster was present but there was a lack of local leaders. TMC, on the other hand, was a well-oiled machinery specialising in the “last-mile delivery of the vote” when it mattered. BJP simply did not have the boots on the ground to encash the disillusionment that many people felt with the TMC. A senior TMC leader told News18 that BJP’s ground strength in Bengal was not like in UP, Bihar or Madhya Pradesh and this is where the regional party always had the edge.

Due to that, BJP was unable to inspire the confidence in people that it would come to power. While BJP said it could work on the 2019 gains to come to power in West Bengal, now it is clear that the eastern state is not that easy to win. TMC itself took 12 years to dislodge the Left government in 2011 after Banerjee lost two elections. BJP thought it could do so in a matter of two years given the Modi factor but it was not to be.

The West Bengal election also raises a question over  BJP’s strategy of not going with a CM face in a state election whenever it has faced a mercurial incumbent such as Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi or Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal. Sensing this after his experience of working with Kejriwal in the last Delhi elections, strategist Prashant Kishor made Mamata Banerjee the only face in the campaign material of TMC, putting the party in the background. This proved to be a smart strategy as BJP failed to project any dominant local face who would challenge Banerjee.

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In the end, top BJP leaders were holding rallies while speaking in Hindi while Banerjee made it a point to speak in Bengali at rallies.  Most senior leaders of BJP who contested the election, including MPs, are struggling to win their seats. The urban voter seems to have not left Banerjee’s side given how she blamed the Centre for the Covid second wave and spread in the state lately.

Way forward for BJP

This loss will be a big disappointment for BJP’s top leaders and especially Amit Shah as he invested a lot of political capital to win Bengal. The present BJP under Narendra Modi is not a party to seek any moral victories in the event that it ends up with about 80 seats, up from just three in 2016 as the party knows well that it had led in 121 assembly segments just two years ago. This result is nothing short of a big setback.

However, BJP's Suvendu Adhikari has managed to defeat Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram, giving them the opportunity to question why Banerjee lost her own seat when TMC claimed she is popular in the state. But the TMC has refused to accept the defeat, and while the party's request for recount has been rejected by the Election Commission, Banerjee has made it clear she will move the court against 'mischief'.

Besides these games of one-upmanship, it is now clear that BJP is the main opposition in West Bengal and needs to work more on the ground to wrest the state after five years.

It would, however, be more concerned immediately over a buoyed Banerjee’s attempt to forge a united front against the BJP at the national level ahead of the 2024 elections and her resolve to fight against the PM from the Varanasi seat. The West Bengal win opens up a new discourse in national politics with the possibility of Banerjee being a rallying force against Modi.