In Bengal, it looks like a long haul for BJP in run-up to 2024 LS polls

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) sole consolation from the just-concluded, three-tiered West Bengal panchayat election is that it retained its second position, after the Trinamool Congress Party (TMC).

But caveats apply.
 

One, the vote polled by the BJP declined from 38.1 per cent in the last election (Assembly) in 2021 to 22.8 per cent, while significantly the share of the Left Front with its regional allies, the Congress and the Indian Secular Front (ISF), rose from 8.39 per cent to 20.9 per cent. The Congress had no tie-up with the Left in 2021 while the ISF, an entity appealing distinctly to West Bengal’s Muslims, emerged just before the last Assembly polls and made no impact then. Two, the BJP lost considerable ground in the Jangalmahal and North Bengal regions, which were regarded its strongholds since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and contributed most of the parliamentary seats it had won. On the flip side, the BJP registered its best performance this time in Purba Medinipur district, home to Suvendu Adhikari, the Opposition leader in the Legislative Assembly and the party’s best-known face in the state, and to an extent in minority-heavy Malda district, where the TMC suffered heavy losses.
 

The BJP’s state president, Sukanta Majumdar, blamed the Opposition’s rout on the TMC’s “hooliganism”, which, he alleged, “crossed all limits”. The BJP’s West Bengal vice-president, Rathin Bose, said: “From the filing of nominations to counting, there was excessive violence. State police participated as though they were TMC workers.”
 

Agnimitra Paul, state general secretary and Asansol South MLA, alleged: “No proper voting took place. There was rigging and violence and more than half the booths didn’t have central forces. There were no CCTVs. In Diamond Harbour (South 24 Parganas district), which is the area of Abhishek Banerjee (the local Lok Sabha MP and TMC local general secretary), my counting agents were not allowed to enter the booths. It seems as though Mamata Banerjee (chief minister and TMC chairperson) thinks West Bengal is a separate country.”
 

Doubtless, the 45 deaths (the count rises by the day) testified to the intensity of the violence that swept the state during the polls. But West Bengal BJP seniors cautioned that the party must delve deeper into the reasons for its setback.
 

A senior BJP leader said: “The first important lesson for us is that the Central Election Commission must stay in the state at least two moths before the polls. We have to create confidence among the people in and around the sensitive localities because the practice and extent of electoral violence have been made into a fine art (by the TMC).”
 

What then explained the BJP’s noteworthy performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, where it picked up 18 of the 42 seats, defying projections? A BJP source said: “The same conditions didn’t prevail. There was complacency in the TMC almost everywhere except Diamond Harbour. Counting was reasonably fair.” The source added: “By the time of the 2021 Assembly polls, the TMC got its act together and resorted to malpractices in counting.”
 

A West Bengal office-bearer said: “The BJP is pulling in two directions. The first, the crowds are assembling around Adhikari. He’s drawing huge crowds. 
 

The rank and file has agreed that he’s their leader. But the organisational structure is moving in another direction and there’s an apparent mismatch. The inability to do better in the panchayat polls is also because of this inherent divergence in approach.”
 

This assessment was shared by another leader who candidly admitted: “Our central leaders are not aware that Bharat is one but West Bengal is another. Last time we came second in the panchayat polls but our morale was not down. This time our morale is down because genuine grassroots leaders have been sidelined. It’s as though Adhikari is enough but one Suvendu can’t do everything.”
 

Another political flaw pinpointed by state office-bearers was the Delhi leadership’s predilection to fine-tune caste equations by co-opting the smaller castes. “In West Bengal, caste doesn’t matter in the ultimate analysis. You should do local micro-management only after establishing a mega narrative,” said one. The choice of Ananta Maharaj, who heads a faction of the Greater Cooch Behar People’s Association, for the pending Rajya Sabha elections was cited as an example of Delhi’s “preoccupation” with caste politics to the detriment of overlooking the big picture.

He has been demanding a separate Cooch Behar state. Maharaj belongs to the Rajbanshi sub-caste of the Dalits and the community accounts for nearly 30 per cent of North Bengal’s electorate, counting almost as much as the Matua community of the Dalits, which the BJP assiduously courted before the Assembly polls and succeeded in coaxing their support. “Maharaj is seen as someone wanting to break up West Bengal. We’ve handed Mamata a regionalist platform because the demand for a separate state enhances her charge that outsiders treat West Bengal as a casual plaything,” a source said.
 

As Adhikari belaboured the theme of the TMC’s “violence”, which observers pointed out, was countered “quite effectively” by the BJP in the local body polls, and called for the imposition of Article 355 or 356 (President’s rule), on the ground, it looks like a long haul for the BJP in the run-up to 2024.