Despite Nandigram defeat, Didi scores hat-trick of wins in Bengal

BJP's vitriolic campaign and the lack of a known local face ended up favouring and increasing Mamata's mass appeal

Even as she lost in Nandigram to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee stopped the BJP in its tracks in West Bengal, trouncing the saffron party.

According to the latest results displayed in the Election Commission’s (EC) website till the TMC had won 103 seats and leading in 113 other seats, indicating that it was well on its way to win at least 200 seats.

As for the BJP, the EC website showed that at around the same time it won only in 24 seats and was leading in 50 other seats indicating that the party may barely get at around 80 seats. The Left Front and Congress were yet to win or gain a lead in any of the seats.

Considering the results of the last Lok Sabha elections where the BJP won a record 18 seats, Mamata had all the reasons to worry. BJP’s use of defection tactics against the TMC and the prospect of a split in the minority votes in Bengal with the entry of the Indian Secular Front (ISF) added to her concern.

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It seems that despite the BJP’s top brass including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and party president BJP Nadda launching a vitriolic campaign in the state, they failed to dent Mamata’s mass appeal. The fact that the BJP has no prominent face in Bengal to rival that of Mamata and is totally dependent on the Prime Minister has likely cost the saffron party dearly. Its decision of not projecting anyone as the Chief Ministerial candidate may have also gone against its favour.

The BJP’s highly polarised campaign persistently accusing Mamata of minority appeasement and efforts to consolidate Hindu votes in its favour seems to have further consolidated the Muslim votes in favour of the TMC. So much so that the TMC got huge success in minority-dominated districts of Malda and Murshidabad, which used to be Congress bastions. Bengal has a Muslim population of nearly 30 per cent.

With the exception of Suvendu Adhikari, BJP’s defection tactics against the TMC seems to have backfired as most of the TMC turncoats were either trailing or lost at the time of writing. Mamata’s aggressive campaign against the TMC turncoats, terming them as “traitors” seems to have worked.

Senior TMC leaders and Ministers Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Partha Chatterjee, Arup Biswas, and Sovandeb Chattopadhyay secured victories with comfortable margins.

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“The credit for TMC’s success goes to Mamata Banerjee. We have to introspect and find out whether organizational weakness, absence of a known face, or the ‘insider-outsider’ debate caused our setback,” said BJP national general secretary and co-observer in Bengal Kailash Vijayvergiya.

Apart from Adhikari, heavyweight BJP candidates such as Union Minister Babul Supriyo and sitting MP Locket Chatterjee suffered defeats.

“While the entire state has given one mandate, can it happen that one constituency will give another mandate? Is it possible? It is not. They stopped the server for about three hours and announced the winner (Mamata) and then they said something else. So some cheating is going on? We will file a court case,” said Mamata.

However, even as it ended up far from its declared aim of winning 200 seats in Bengal, the BJP has made considerable inroads in the State. From winning just three seats in the 2016 Assembly elections to becoming the main Opposition party in the State in the 2021 Assembly elections and becoming the main Opposition party in Bengal, the saffron party’s progress is not negligible.