SAFFRON STASIS IN BENGAL

If there is one political outfit in West Bengal that has more trouble on its hands than the ruling Trinamool Congress, it is the newly-minted principal Opposition party—the Bharatiya Janata Party. Do a SWOT comparison.

- Romita Datta

The TMC has no dearth of headaches: a string of CBI probes involving its leaders and administration, a perception of lawlessness, open infighting in the ranks. Yet its centre holds, and a sense of vitality attends to it always. Seen against that, the BJP’s Bengal unit seems consumed by an organisational rot, and the utter listlessness with which it’s dealing with it speaks of a certain loss of direction.

The BJP lost nearly 25 per cent of its vote share in the recent bypolls, where it saw a stronghold like Asansol slipping out of its hands after eight years. That bypoll itself was necessitated because its star-MP, Babul Supriyo, had crossed over to the TMC (and won the Ballygunge assembly bypoll for them). Indeed, it’s a mini-hemorrhage: another MP is rumoured to be on his way out, and as many as seven MLAs have already left. The party also drew a total blank in the civic body polls in March. Those are the surface symptoms of a deeper organisational malaise: a demoralised flock that nurses deep grievances against the leadership, and open quarrels as well as widespread disaffection at the top. Has the central leadership given up on the Bengal BJP? The party’s Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh thinks so.