Bengal’s 'setting theory' and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections

West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee (left) and PM Narendra Modi. (File image)

A year before the national polls one question is dominating West Bengal’s political spectrum. Is Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tacitly backing the Bharatiya Janata Party – as the Left-Congress claim – or (is) she aligning with Congress or even a non-Congress opposition alliance? No one can confirm or reject such speculations as Mamata periodically sends out contradicting signals.

There are examples galore to indicate Mamata’s contradictory approach, which could be a strategy in itself. In March, she said the All India Trinamool Congress will contest the Lok Sabha polls “alone” without an alliance. In two months – after the Karnataka poll – she proposed to back Congress with a caveat – Congress “should support regional parties”.

BJP’s Bengal Bet

If the first comment had damaged opposition unity, then the second one is a blow to BJP. BJP had won 18 out of Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 and anything less than that is a reversal, compounded by the developments in Bihar which is out of NDA’s control.

NDA got 39 out of 40 seats in Bihar (2019) and a plunge is inevitable, while in Uttar Pradesh BJP’s seats dipped by 12 percent between the last two Lok Sabha polls (2014 and 2019) and 18 percent between assembly polls (2017 and 2022) – a reason for BJP to engage with Pasmandas or backward Muslims.

Therefore, the BJP in Bengal needs to perform, partly to balance out possible losses – at least – in Bihar. The three states – UP, Bihar and Bengal – delivered nearly 35 percent of the NDA seats in 2019.

The Didi-Modi Setting Theory

BJP’s compulsion leads to a popular “Didi-Modi setting theory” – a clandestine understanding between the Chief Minister and the Prime Minister – and even BJP veterans encouraged the theory. Trinamool’s recent move to poach Bayron Biswas, the lone Congress MLA, has consolidated the theory. The Left-Congress argues that Mamata is systematically weakening the opposition to benefit BJP in order to obtain a guarantee that BJP would facilitate Trinamool’s victory in the next assembly polls (2026). Mamata will confront a15-year anti-incumbency in 2026.

There is an element of naiveté in the “setting theory” as politics is not a barter-system based on long-term peer commitments, yet Mamata’s frequent change of heart appears to have weakened the possibility of an alliance with Trinamool, Left and Congress in it.

But then that is half the story.

The other half indicates Mamata and her second-in-command Abhishek Banerjee, the nephew, have not reduced the momentum of their bombarding BJP in the state, while Mahua Moitra enthusiastically replays it in the Parliament for the national audience.

On the other hand, central investigative agencies are routinely interrogating Mamata’s colleagues, including Abhishek and his family. Many have also been arrested. Yet her detractors foster the “setting theory” to allege “a got up match” between Trinamool-BJP, which purportedly contains a plan to mutually polarise votes on “Hindu-Muslim lines”.

Extreme communal polarisation in the past indeed helped both Trinamool and BJP and decimated the centrists. The polarisation motivated Muslims – and a section of left-leaning Hindus – to vote for Trinamool, while the anti-Trinamool Hindu vote entirely shifted to BJP. Thus it was mandatory to rupture the Bengali Muslim electorate but both the Left and the Right failed to engineer the split.

Muslims Stun Mamata

But surprisingly, within two years of a comfortable victory, Muslim-majority Sagardighi in central Bengal trounced Trinamool in an assembly by-poll in February. Mamata was so confident about the minority vote that she had nominated a Hindu Brahmin in Sagardighi – a constituency with nearly 65 percent Muslims.

The defeat must have stung and she sprung into action. Mamata removed the minority affairs minister, brought her favourite bureaucrats back, set up a Minority Development Board, and activated the clergy to placate the Muslims.

But the Chief Minister’s drive to promote unheard of events like “Bengal Kumbh” to her alleged strategy to erode political influence of the Muslims – who ruled undivided Bengal for five centuries – with other “anti-minority measures” had annoyed the community, which accounts for nearly one third of voters in the state. The Congress-Left is trying to exploit this annoyance.

2024 And Beyond

However, a significant takeaway of Bengal politics is electors’ intent to vote against the ruling party in various elections – perhaps to discipline them – but when it comes to the quinquennial Assembly elections they tend to vote for the incumbents. So, there is no guarantee that the annoyed electors would not vote for their Didi in 2026. The Left's 34-year rule is a saga of this “love-hate-love” relationship, provided Mamata manages to keep the opposition divided, like the Left did.

Lastly, there is very little to write about the main opposition party – the BJP – at a time when the Left is slowly swallowing the Right in the minor polls. It requires a dipstick survey to find out how a party that won one-fourth of assembly seats (77 seats) in 2021 with nearly 40 percent votes and a robust central leadership has managed to politically invisibilise itself in Bengal. At this point, it is reasonable to conclude that BJP has very little to hope for in 2024.

Yet if the saffron party manages to bag half of the 42 Bengal Lok Sabha seats or more, it would be difficult to brush-off the “setting theory” as the BJP is just not in a position to put up agents in even half of the polling booths in the summer of 2023.

Suvojit Bagchi is a Kolkata-based journalist and previously worked with Ananda Bazar Patrika, BBC World Service and The Hindu. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.