Politics | ‘Operation Topple Mamata’ may be already on

Subir Roy

The remarkable win that the BJP has scored in West Bengal in the 2019 parliamentary elections, taking its seat tally form two to 18, has immediately cast a shadow over the future of the state’s Trinamool Congress government.

It is being openly speculated whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi will let chief minister Mamata Banerjee survive her full term after she had waged a direct personal campaign against him and so patently under-performed herself.

How serious the threat is can be gauged from the fact that a top BJP functionary has already issued a public alert. Sunil Deodhar, the BJP’s national secretary in charge of Andhra Pradesh and Tripura, has asserted that the Trinamool Congress government will fall within six months. This, when there are still a couple of years to go before state assembly elections become due in 2021.

What lends credibility to this forecast is the fact that BJP leaders have already asserted on more than one occasion that many Trinamool legislators have approached them with the offer to defect. How true this is will only become clear over time but these assertions are sure to destabilize the state government and probably hasten a process which would have taken its own time to unfold.

Analysts take this scenario seriously because Trinamool Congress legislators are not known for any kind of strong ideological commitment that will make them averse to countenancing material inducements to defect. If there is any strong mooring that the government has, then it is the chief minister herself, known as an implacable street fighter who can prove to be the most tenacious of political opponents. (It is not as if Banerjee herself is averse to changing sides. She has been a union minister both under Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh.)

In fact, the defection process has already begun with Banerjee’s former right hand man, Mukul Roy, having crossed over and joined the BJP in 2017 when he was considered to be allegedly involved in the chit fund scam that had gripped the state.

Roy, who is known as an organization man, has deep knowledge of all who matter in his erstwhile party and has already played a role in screening the defections that took place prior to the elections. Roy is considered to have overseen the defections of four Trinamool members, three of whom have gone on to win parliamentary seats.

So all the elements needed to dislodge the Trinamool government are already in place. The BJP, emboldened by a massive victory, considers the Trinamool an implacable foe. It also has no qualms about playing the game of numbers, considering what it has done for ministry formation in the past, notably in Goa. Trinamool MLAs, given their disposition, are ripe for the picking. Lastly, a point man to oversee the whole process is already there.

In fact, the BJP may not even have to overtly topple the West Bengal government. Financially, it is in none too good a shape and all that is need for it to be in a serious financial crunch is for the Centre to stall some key financial transfers. A government that cannot pay its bills, notably government employees’ salaries, will be considered to be half dead.

The only reason which can make the BJP leadership go slow is the apprehension that the public will disapprove of its toppling game and take away from the support that it can expect to garner in the assembly elections that will follow.

The current popular attitude in West Bengal -- where the Trinamool has won 43 per cent of the popular vote in the parliamentary elections, with the BJP following closely behind at 40 per cent -- is tolerating Banerjee’s government without any kind of strong attachment to it.

It has a fairly poor record of governance marked by local toughs playing rent seekers and engaging in internecine gang warfare. There is no popular demand to replace it but few tears are likely to be shed should someone topple it. In this situation, Banerjee has to live from day to day depending entirely on her own resources. Her party is, of course, currently solidly behind her but this support can disappear as soon as she is seen to be under siege.