Battle For Bengal

THE BJP HAS MADE DEEP INROADS IN THE STATE, MAKING THE MOST OF ANTI-INCUMBENCY AND DIVISIVE PLANKS SUCH AS MAMATA BANERJEE’S ALLEGED MINORITY-APPEASEMENT POLICIES. WILL THE PARTY’S BID TO FAN THIS POPULAR ANGER CONVERT INTO VOTES

- Romita Datta

Last March, as the BJP wrested Tripura from the Left, its leaders and workers rejoiced over the march of the party in 21 of India’s 29 states, but party president Amit Shah cautioned against complacency. “Jab tak Odisha, West Bengal aur Kerala mein BJP nahin aa jati, tab tak party ka golden period shuru nahin hoga (the BJP’s golden period will commence only when we win Odisha, West Bengal and Kerala,” he said, conveying that the party’s pan-India dream was far from over. Bengal, apart from being geographically close to Tripura, shares a similar past of Left rule. It was a natural choice for Shah’s ‘destination next’. ‘Ebar Bangla’—Shah gave the battle cry, charted out the roadmap and set a highly ambitious but not impossible target of winning 23 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state. If Tripura could do a turnaround with the BJP’s 1.3 per cent vote share and zero seats in the 2013 assembly poll, West Bengal, with its three MLAs, two MPs and an increasing vote share—from 13 per cent in 2014 Lok Sabha to 22 per cent in the subsequent bypolls—seemed comfortably close to scripting a similar story.

Shah’s strategy was formulated in April 2018, immediately after the party’s victory in Tripura and after sensing people’s dissatisfaction with the Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) alleged extortion or tolabaji, where beneficiaries of various welfare schemes are forced to pay a ‘cut’ to party leaders in order to claim the dole—be it for Nijashree (LIG housing scheme), Yuvasree (allowance and credit for the unemployed youth) or job cards for 100 days of work. There’s also discontent within the majority community over the TMC’s alleged appeasement politics.