Sending proponent of North Bengal statehood to Rajya Sabha kicks off BJP’s 2024 defence of strongholds

By nominating Ananta Maharaj, a desperate BJP is sending the message to the people of the region ahead of the Lok Sabha polls that the party is concerned about their sentiments.

Since the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980, this is the first time that the party will send its representative to the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal – and the party has sprung a surprise. Instead of a BJP leader, the high command has selected an ally, Ananta Maharaj, for the seat.

Ananta Maharaj comes from the Rajbanshi community and heads the Greater Cooch Behar People’s Association (GCPA), an ally of the saffron party. The elections for the seven Rajya Sabha seats from the state would be held on July 24 and BJP, with 69 MLAs, has the numbers to win the seventh seat while the ruling TMC will corner the rest.

The Rajbanshis Of North Bengal

Ignoring its own leaders when a rare opportunity to send its first MP to the Rajya Sabha from Bengal brings to the fore the importance of  the Rajbanshis to the BJP. By nominating Ananta Maharaj, the influential Rajbanshi community that accounts for more than 30 percent of North Bengal’s population is in the BJP’s sights. The community is listed as a Scheduled Caste in the state.

They are based mostly in the districts of Coochbehar, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, North Dinajpur, South Dinajpur, Darjeeling and Malda – falling under North Bengal, which has eight Lok Sabha seats and 54 assembly seats. But the community is mostly concentrated in Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri districts.

Rajbanshis emerged as one of the strongest supporters of the saffron party in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and it was primarily this support that helped the party to snatch the Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri Lok Sabha seats from the ruling TMC. This support continued in the 2021 assembly polls, where, even amid the TMC wave, BJP won the majority of seats in Coochbehar and Jalpaiguri.

But after the assembly polls, there have been signs of dwindling support among the community towards BJP. This was first reflected in BJP losing the Dinhata bypolls by a large margin just months after winning it in the assembly polls. The trend became more clear in the recent three-tier panchayat elections, where TMC won most of the seats in these two districts.

Obviously, the ruling party generally has an advantage in the rural body polls, but these developments, nevertheless, do indicate that the Rajbanshis are drifting away from the saffron party.

North Bengal: Bastion BJP Can’t Lose

Ananta Maharaj has been a proponent of carving out a separate state or a union territory out of West Bengal comprising parts of North Bengal, which for decades has complained of being ignored. Despite these grievances, the demand for a separate state has failed to gain momentum. However, emotions remain.

Although he is a Rajbanshi, Ananta Maharaj’s demand for separate state echoes beyond the Rajbanshis in the region. Notably, several BJP leaders have also raised this demand. BJP Alipurduar Lok Sabha MP John Barla, a tribal, has also voiced his support for a separate North Bengal.

By nominating Ananta Maharaj, a desperate BJP is sending the message to the people of the region ahead of the Lok Sabha polls that the party is concerned about (and understands) their sentiments. This way, BJP believes that it would be able to arrest the dwindling support in the region, which has been the stronghold powering its rise in Bengal.

In the recent panchayat elections, apart from Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri, the party has performed poorly in Alipurduar, North Dinajpur and South Dinajpur, which happens to be the home turf of the state party chief Sukanta Majumdar.

Risky, But No Other Option

Apart from some pockets, BJP has struggled to make inroads into South Bengal, the largest region of the state. There has also been a gradual resurgence of the Left in South Bengal even as BJP seemed to be receding in the region as indicated by the panchayat elections. More worrying are the signs of BJP's declining support among the Matuas, another Scheduled Caste community, which strongly backed the party in the 2019 elections.

Given all this, the party isn’t very hopeful in South Bengal, though the tribal pockets of the Jangalmahal region can still be salvaged. For now, the 2024 Lok Sabha polls – not the 2026 state assembly polls – remains the top priority for the central leadership. This leaves BJP with North Bengal, which elected seven BJP representatives to Lok Sabha in 2019. It remains the region where the party has chances of winning maximum seats in 2024. Ananta Maharaj’s nomination and Rajbanshi support becomes very crucial in this situation.

However, in doing so, it has taken a calculated risk as other areas like the Greater Kolkata region are averse to any division of the state. There is also the long pending Darjeeling issue. BJP, however, has officially avoided supporting the demand for a separate state. But this nomination is likely to be utilised by TMC to paint the former as a separatist party in the state, particularly in South Bengal, although it’s a different story that even TMC, including chief minister Mamata Banerjee, till recently had tried to woo Ananta Maharaj. This shows his importance in the politics of North Bengal.

Sagarneel Sinha is a political commentator and tweets @SagarneelSinha. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of the publication.