Bhowanipur bypoll: The incongruous Bengal-Uttarakhand parallel

The effort to portray BJP's actions in Dehradun as aimed at frustrating Mamata's plans are attempts to distract from the mess it has on its hands in Uttarakhand

It is incongruous enough to compare Uttarakhand and West Bengal. The hill state has a small 70-member legislature and sends a meagre five MPs to the Lok Sabha. On the other hand, Bengal has the country's second-largest legislative assembly with 294-seats and elects 42-members to the Lok Sabha, the third-highest for any state in the country.

Such a comparison is more odious when the leadership change of a government facing severe anti-incumbency in Uttarakhand with elections round the corner is portrayed as an excuse to deny Mamata Banerjee an opportunity to get elected to Bengal's legislative assembly.

The speculation attempts to distract from the mess that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has on its hands in Uttarakhand. It also flies in the face of facts to suggest the BJP's actions in the hill state have to do with some obtuse plan the party has in Bengal.

According to the law, a minister must quit if they fail to get elected to their state legislature within six months of their appointment.

There is speculation that the BJP booted out Tirath Singh Rawat as the Uttarakhand chief minister before the expiry of his six months to queer the pitch for Banerjee in Bengal.

After the BJP replaced Trivendra Singh Rawat with Tirath Singh Rawat in March, he is the third chief minister in the state. However, let alone six months, Tirath Singh Rawat, appointed on March 10, could not complete four months in the chair. In his stead, the BJP has appointed Pushkar Singh Dhami.

Corruption allegations and Covid-19 mismanagement, including allowing the Kumbh festival to occur, have marred the performance of the BJP government in Uttarakhand.

The BJP did not field Tirath Singh Rawat for the by-poll in April to the Salt assembly constituency and has changed three chief ministers since March. All of this betrays the unpopularity of its government in Uttarakhand, and an unnerved BJP camp was averse to risk a potential electoral loss for its sitting chief minister.

The BJP is projecting Dhami, the 45-year-old new CM and son of an ex-serviceman, to attract the youth and ex-servicemen. These are both sizable chunks of the electorate in Uttarakhand. The BJP leadership argues that Dhami is relatively young, and his appointment will appeal to the 44 lakh youth of the state. The government is promising to recruit 20,000 government jobs.

But Dhami's appointment has upset several Uttarakhand leaders of the BJP. Some of them had threatened to not turn up for his oath-taking ceremony before the BJP leadership reached out to them to diffuse the situation.

Uttarakhand, since it was created in the year 2000, is known not to return a government. If the BJP's hopes of returning to power in Uttarakhand are looking bleak, its attempts to become a potent opposition in Bengal to Banerjee's Trinamool Congress are falling flat.

The Trinamool Congress believes it can persuade the Election Commission to hold the by-polls in Bengal to the seven vacant seats in the state assembly before November when Banerjee's six months as chief minister get over. She is not an MLA but plans to contest and win from the Bhowanipur seat.

Moreover, or so the Trinamool Congress has taken to argue, the Covid-19 spread has subsided in the state for now. The infection rate has declined from 33 per cent in April to a little under two per cent now. The leadership is confident the EC will take note of this rather than waiting for the third wave.

According to sources in the Trinamool Congress, Banerjee is planning to campaign against the BJP in the forthcoming Assembly elections to five states, particularly in Uttar Pradesh. She plans to travel across the country to flag issues of joblessness and inflation.

The Trinamool Congress is also confident that the perception of BJP denying her the opportunity to get elected would further fan Bengali sub-nationalism and lose BJP support in the state. It is determined to make the upcoming monsoon session of Parliament a stormy one for the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.