Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, April 17: What is true for the Congress in most of the states is what is happening within the BJP in West Bengal. As the party’s downhill slide continued since its rout in the hands of the Trinamool Congress in the state Assembly elections last year, knives are out in the BJP against the present state leadership following the party’s defeats both in the Lok Sabha and state Assembly by-elections on Saturday.
Not only the party lost, it was perhaps one of the one of the worst performance of the BJP in the Asansol Lok Sabha seat that the Bollywood star Shatrughan Sinha won for the TMC defeating his BJP rival Agnimitra Paul by a record margin of over 3.3 lakh votes. In the last two general elections, the noted playback singer Babul Supriyo had won the Asansol seat for the BJP with a margin of over 70,000 votes in 2014 and by over 1.97 lakh votes in 2019 when he defeated another noted cine star Moon Moon Sen.
But the BJP insulted Supriyo giving all the credit to prime minister Narendra Modi for his victory. Soon after his victory in the last elections, the BJP leadership had commented that even a “matchstick” contesting on the BJP symbol could win the Asansol seat. Not only insulted, Supriyo, who was inducted as a minister of state in the union cabinet, was unceremoniously dropped by Modi last year making him to rush to the TMC which succeeded in convincing him that retiring from politics was not the best option for his when he was still very young.
While Supriyo won the Ballygunj state Assembly seat in Kolkata city for the TMC, he on way to victory left his BJP rival Keya Ghosh to third spot and made her to lose her deposit with the CPM rival Saira Halim emerging as his nearest rival, which was also a setback for the BJP. Even in Asansol, the BJP candidate who suffered the record defeat happened to be the BJP sitting member of the state Assembly which showed that the influence of the saffron party is steadily waning in West Bengal where the BJP had hoped to win a majority in the last elections.
Not only in West Bengal, even in the neighbouring Bihar the BJP’s defeat in the hands of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in the by-election was “celebrated” by its one-time ally, the Vikasheel Insaan Party (VIP) chief Mukesh Sahani though his candidate also was one of the losers.
Hurt by the BJP engineering defections within his party taking away all his three MLAs and unceremoniously dropping him from the Nitish Kumar cabinet, Sahani on the bypoll results commented, “We thank the people for showing faith in VIP for the Bochahan Assembly bypoll. We contested to win and weren’t successful, but we congratulate Amar Paswan (RJD) for the win. Even in our defeat there lies a win for us,” said Sahani while speaking to reporters. Amar Paswan happened to be the son of VIP sitting MLA Musafir Paswan whose death had caused the by-election.
Sahani stressed that the BJP lost the bypoll by over 36,000 votes. “Some state leaders (of BJP) still have time for introspection and stop misleading central BJP leaders. The BJP will have more setbacks in 2024 (Lok Sabha elections) or 2025 (Bihar state polls)…BJP Bihar president Sanjay Jaiswal should resign,” he said.
Soon after the bypoll results were out on Saturday, a BJP member of the Lok Sabha from West Bengal Saumitra Khan trained his guns at the party’s state leadership for the latest electoral debacle. “When inexperienced politicians run a political party then this kind of result is expected. We are paying the price for it. This is what happens when you don’t have experienced leaders running the party. We have a lot to learn from the Trinamool Congress. They have shown how best to do politics. We have to fight a lot. However, we cannot expect electoral results to go our way as long as there are inexperienced leaders in key party posts. They must bring back the expelled leaders back to our party,” Khan said in a video message.
It was apparent from his statements that the party MP was training his guns at BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar and the party’s state general secretary (organisation) Amitava Chakraborty. In January, the party had expelled several leaders, including senior members Jay Prakash Majumdar and Ritesh Tiwari, for speaking against the party. Majumdar later joined the TMC.
Reacting to the BJP MP’s remarks, Majumdar said, “When I was with the BJP, I had said the same thing. Their inexperienced leaders cannot run the party and fight against a party like the TMC. To save the party, they must win back the confidence of its grassroots-level workers. The BJP leaders should revolt against the present state leadership and bring in new and experienced leaders.”
Asked to comment on the party’s dismal showing, the BJP state president said, “There are a lot of factors which contributed to this electoral result. We will definitely introspect. But it is true that a large number of people could not vote due to TMC’s terror.” After the Bypoll results, Paul, the BJP’s defeated candidate in Asansol, had confessed that she did not see any sign of rigging by the TMC and had stated that the central security forces had succeeded in maintaining law and order and instil confidence among the voters.
Till the 2019, Parliamentary elections, the BJP was going from strength to strength in West Bengal. From only two seats the party had won in West Bengal in 2014, including Asansol by Supriyo and Darjeeling seat in alliance with a popular local party, its strength went up to 18 seats in the last elections. With the TMC wresting Asansol from it, the BJP’s Lok Sabha tally from Bengal has dropped to 17.
But since the Assembly polls last year, when the party won 77 seats in the 282-member House, the BJP has failed to win a single election in West Bengal. From being the main contender to the TMC, the saffron camp is now competing with the CPM to retain the second position.
In the February civic elections — the first big polls in the state since the Assembly polls, the BJP failed to win any of the 108 municipalities in the state. The Trinamool won 102 of these civic bodies, the CPI(M) won one (Taherpur municipality in Nadia district) and the newly launched Hamro Party won Darjeeling while the remaining four bodies had hung boards.
Of the total 2,171 wards across 108 municipalities, the BJP won only 63 compared to the Trinamool’s 1,870. The party’s vote share stood at 13 per cent, behind the Left’s 14 per cent, marking a steep fall from its 40 per cent vote share in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Besides, the party also suffered setbacks in the by-polls late last year while losing the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) elections and subsequent municipal elections.
For its next big test, the panchayat elections that are due next year, the BJP will have to put in a lot of work to galvanise its rank-and-file into action. With the Left regaining lost ground, the BJP now has the twin challenge of tackling both the Trinamool and the Left.
“People have lost their faith in the BJP. The Narendra Modi government has failed to deliver and has only left the voters disappointed. People have rejected them. The elections have proved that there is no alternative to the TMC in Bengal. People here have full faith in the leadership of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee,” senior TMC leader Firhad Hakim said.