Bengal Turns After 15 Years

Notwithstanding the refusal to accept the poll verdict, alleging large-scale vote theft, the fact remains that a couple of crucial mistakes committed by former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during the run-up to the polls cost her the state. Many may think that incidents such as the selective removal of names of people belonging to a particular community from the voter list, a biased Election Commission (EC), etc., made the victory possible for the BJP. But, as a matter of fact, Mamata Banerjee’s excessive self-confidence and her decision not to join hands with other like-minded parties, when her mighty political opponent left no stone unturned to dislodge the regime, are the reasons that brought about her downfall.

It is difficult to understand how this so-called “Firebrand Daughter of Bengal”, so deeply familiar with the state’s political reality, could make such a mistake. After all, this was the same Mamata who, even in the most favourable political circumstances in 2011, formed an alliance with the Congress to completely shut the door on the Left. Quite unfortunately, she did just the opposite this time while fighting one of the toughest political battles of her career, which virtually left the door open for the BJP.

For instance, West Bengal is a multilingual state. In many Assembly constituencies across the state, linguistic minorities are the decisive factor, especially in Kolkata and its surrounding areas. Bhabanipur, the constituency of Mamata herself, is often referred to as a “Mini India”, where people from every region of the country have lived for years. During the last few elections, the rise of the BJP in such constituencies was clearly visible. Therefore, when the BJP launched an aggressive campaign to capture Bengal, Mamata should have forged electoral alliances with parties from the Hindi heartland, such as the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, among others, in an effort to stop the BJP’s juggernaut by preventing it from securing the entire non-Bengali vote. It could have benefited her had she offered a few seats to those parties. It is difficult to understand why she merely invited those parties for token campaigning instead of making them genuine allies, considering the prevailing situation.

Again, statistics clearly show that Mamata’s success depends heavily on minority support. In the 2021 Assembly elections, her party crossed the 200-seat mark largely because it won almost all the seats in the minority-dominated districts of Murshidabad and Malda. This time, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list led to the removal of the highest number of names from precisely those two districts. But instead of compensating for the loss by joining hands with the Congress and the Left parties, Mamata allowed the BJP to make a dent in these districts.