3 PARTIES COMBINE TO MAKE BENGAL A BIPOLAR CONTEST

THE election battle in West Bengal is moving southwards with the third phase of polling on Tuesday, when the quiet shift in political strategy of anti-BJP consolidation will unfold in full strength, threatening Narendra Modi-Amit Shah's fantastical ambition of winning 20-35 of the state's 42 parliamentary seats.

- 

The contest in the 36 seats where elections will be held over the next five phases will be competitive and three-cornered. Election 2024 is different: this time, the Trinamool Congress, the Congress and the CPI(M)-led Left Front are competing to defeat the BJP.

Having a common foe does not make the election easier for the contestants. It does, however, make it easier for voters to choose, because there are only two sides in the fight against the BJP or for any of the other three. There is a ripple in West Bengal's politics that the CPI(M) is set to make a small but significant comeback by reversing the outflow of its votes to the BJP that was evident in the 2019 Lok Sabha and the 2021 assembly elections. The big jump in BJP's vote share to just over 40 percent in 2019, up from 17 percent in 2014, happened because there was a sharp fall in the CPI(M)'s vote share from nearly 30 percent in 2014 to 7.5 percent in 2019, as the bulk of voters shifted right and a smaller number shifted to Trinamool.

The Congress and CPI(M) failed to win even one seat in the 2021 state assembly elections; in 2019, the CPI(M) was reduced to nil and the Congress salvaged two seats, including the party's former Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury's Baharampur constituency, which he has held from 1999, and Maldah Dakshin, a family stronghold of the legendary A B A Ghani Khan Choudhury.