Battleground Bengal: Didi-Modi slugfest

Dubai: This is truly unprecedented — not just in the history of Bengal politics, but in India’s electoral history as well. For the first time since the Election Commission’s (EC) inception in 1952, the central electoral supervisory body has invoked Article 324 in West Bengal. As a result, all campaigning in the state will conclude at 10pm on Thursday night — 24 hours ahead of scheduled close of campaigning on Friday.

This unprecedented measure has been taken by the EC to avoid further violence in the state that has seen a bloody turf war emerge between Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the run-up to the polls, and particularly during the sixth phase of election on May 11, followed by street violence in central Kolkata over BJP president Amit Shah’s road show on Tuesday. Things touched a nadir with the vandalising of a bust of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar — academic, educator and one of the foremost figures of Bengal’s Renaissance movement — during Tuesday’s mayhem on the city’s famed College Street.

Rajeev Kumar, the additional director general (CID), and Atri Bhattacharya, the state’s principal secretary (home), were removed with immediate effect on Wednesday evening under EC orders. All through the day, allegations and counter-allegations were hurled at each other by the TMC and BJP top-brass. While Shah alleged that the violence during his road show in Kolkata was a TMC “conspiracy”, TMC Rajya Sabha member of parliament Derek O’Brien attacked the BJP president, referring to him as a “dhokhabaaz” (fraud) and “pukeworthy”.

If that is shocking, then sample these:

“Didi [‘elder sister’ — a reference to West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee], you are scared. And that is why you have unleashed a reign of terror on the voters of Bengal.” (Prime Minister and BJP stalwart Narendra Modi, while addressing an election rally in Bengal before the sixth phase of polling.)

And this was Mamata’s retort: “Let the elections be over … Will take revenge in every inch of turf.”

According to the EC, after Jammu & Kashmir, the highest deployment of central security forces has been done in poll-bound Bengal. In spite of that, incidents of booth-capturing, intimidation of voters, attacks on candidates have already been reported from the state that has seen at least two deaths in poll-related violence so far.

The question that obviously arises here is that how could BJP — which could not muster more than just a couple of parliamentary seats in the state until recently and with an all-time high general election vote percentage of around 17 per cent in 2014 — manage to suddenly emerge as the ruling TMC’s biggest challenger in a state that has historically been averse to any ultra-rightist political agenda?

“Do not be surprised if BJP comes up with something like a 30 per cent vote share this time. In terms of number of seats, it may not make any significant gains over its 2014 tally, but this ever-increasing BJP vote share is likely to see the ‘eye-for-an-eye’ brand of politics take an even more gory course with 92 municipalities going to the polls next year and of course in the run-up to the 2021 assembly polls,” Biswajit Bhattacharya, political analyst, told Gulf News from Kolkata on Tuesday.

So what has changed in 2019?

Well, the tide had started turning during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls when the BJP, for the first time, amassed a vote share of a little over 17 per cent in Bengal. Thereafter, four significant political developments have taken place, of which three are local and one is more of a national paradigm.

First, the national perspective. Having felt that five years of governance at the Centre didn’t quite bring in the fruits of a promised ‘achhey din’ (better days), the BJP top-brass went gung-ho with its “look East” policy to offset anticipated electoral reversals in northern and Central India. Thereafter, success in the Assam and Tripura state elections made the saffron brigade realise that Bengal, with 42 parliamentary seats, is too big a pie to be neglected any longer.

Such a scenario coincided with certain factors that were brewing within Bengal. And that brings us to the second factor. Since the ouster of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front from power in 2011, the vast majority of Left-leaning political activists, ideologues and grass-roots cadres started feeling increasingly isolated and intimidated by the TMC-led new political order.

This section started seeing the BJP as a source of salvation and a shield against a hegemonic TMC. This trend is likely to continue in this election as well — thanks to a ‘transfer’ of votes to the right-wing party from hard-core Left sympathisers, for whom, ideologically, TMC is still ‘enemy No 1’.

Next, the fact that TMC candidates in 34 per cent of the seats in last year’s Panchayat (rural self-government) elections were elected unopposed — which the opposition attributes to a fear psychosis unleashed by TMC cadres — didn’t go down well with many voters. Parts of rural Bengal are likely to see a backlash to this.

The fourth factor is that after exactly eight years in power, ruling TMC is definitely facing some sort of a voter-fatigue and anti-incumbency in the state. A clear case in point: According to reports, during the sixth phase of polling last Sunday, in Moyna, East Midnapore, believed to be a TMC stronghold, in as many as 25 booths there were no polling agents from the ruling party! This issue has been further compounded by intense infighting within the TMC rank-and-file in various districts of northern and southern Bengal and even in areas in and around Kolkata.

There are also reports of large-scale use of money-power in these elections that is likely to do much more damage to TMC at the grass-roots level than what the party had initially anticipated.

The BJP still doesn’t have the organisational strength that is required to hit an entrenched TMC hard, but the ever-diminishing difference in vote-share between TMC and BJP is likely to keep the state on the edge for some time to come.