By Barun Das Gupta
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee filed her nomination paper from the Nandigram constituency last Wednesday for the coming assembly elections, sounding the reveille for the coming battle royal between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP. The TMC wants to come back to power for the third consecutive term. Mamata. Mamata’s main adversary is her former lieutenant and confidant Suvendu Adhikari who is now contesting as a BJP candidate. The BJP is expected to mobilize to the fullest extent its money, muscle and man-power to defeat Mamata who has, on her side the people who have all along been her strength.
It will be rash to predict the outcome of the elections. But there are certain straws in the wind. Of .late, crowds at BJP meetings are getting thin. The Brigade Parade Ground rally of the Prime Minister on March 7 was no exception. The PM is reported to have taken the State party leaders to task after the meeting for failing to organize a much bigger rally. He gave them a piece of his mind while the State leaders stood in fear and trepidation.
The BJP has other worries, too. So long, the party had three factions: one led by the State party president Dilip Ghosh, the other led by the former State party chief Rahul Sinha and the third commanded by Mukul Roy who defected from the TMC to BJP nearly three and a half years ago. It is a known fact that there is no love lost between Ghosh and Roy. Now, with Suvendu joining the BJP, a fourth faction has emerged. Both Mukul and Suvendu tried to get as many of their followers into the list of party candidates as possible.
Behind the façade of affability, there is a silent rivalry going on between the two former TMC leaders for getting importance in Delhi. Recently, 14 members of the Maldah Zilla Parishad defected from the TMC to the BJP, helping the latter to capture the Zilla Parishad. The credit goes to Suvendu. In some areas the defectors are, or rather were, Mukul loyalists.
There is another problem bedevilling the party. In recent time, many TMC legislators and lower level functionaries have deserted their party and jumped on to the BJP bandwagon, not for serving the country under the inspiring leadership of the Prime Minister, but for getting ‘tickets’ for the polls. This has led to an open war between the old timers who had served the party when it was still struggling to get on its feet and the newcomers who have migrated from the TMC. To accommodate the rival demands of the old timers and the neophytes is not easy. Meanwhile, people of both groups are openly fighting one another, with fisticuffs. Breaking and hurling tables and chairs in full public view is taking place almost daily. That the BJP is welcoming every TMC deserter with open arms speaks volumes on the quality of the human material the Bengal BJP possesses.
The TMC is known as a one-person party, the person being Mamata. Individual TMC candidates do not matter. It is the face of Mamata that matters. Whether it is still true will be tested in the polls. As far as candidate selection is concerned, Mamata wielded the hatchet wherever necessary, denying nomination to many old sitting MLAs or those having a negative public image. She did not spare even Sonali Guha, a four-time MLA, a former deputy speaker and a close confidante of Mamata for over three decades. Sonali lost no time in joining the BJP, reminding Shakespeare’s famous line: “All friendship is feigning.” Mamata has fielded a large number of bright young men who have no past to live down. No finger of accusation can be pointed at them; no charge of corruption can be levelled against them.
The BJP is trying to divide the electorate on communal lines. Even a man like Suvendu Adhikari who had been with Mamata since her street-fighting days against the CPI-M, now says, without batting an eyelid, that: “The Hindus will be under threat if Didi wins.” He is now mouthing all the familiar BJP slogans with gusto – the slogans he had been vocal against till the other day. How quickly the politicians change their beliefs like jerseys!
During the last three-four years, the people of Bengal have seen the central BJP leaders at close quarters; listened to their speeches; heard the language they use and the culture they represent. All these are alien to the Bengali culture and ethos. The electoral outcome will show how far the Bengalis have imbibed or rejected the BJP culture.
There is a third player also in the field. It is the CPI-M-Congress alliance which considers Mamata to be a bigger enemy than the BJP. Throwing principles to the wind, the CPI-M has brought into the alliance (and the Congress supinely accepted it) the Indian Secular Front, a communal outfit led by the Pirzada of Furfura Sharif, Abbas Siddiqui. Some of his video speeches made to his co-religionists are doing the rounds in the digital media. Listening to these in which he calls members of other faiths as “kafers” one wonders how the CPI-M could bring itself to allying with this “Secular” front.
It will only harm the party and bring fresh grist to the communal propaganda mill of the BJP. Since the party lost power in 2011 to Mamata, it has targeted Mamata and TMC, rather than the BJP. It has coined such slogans as “2021-e Ram, 2026-e Bam”, meaning that the 2021 elections will see the success of the BJP and the 2026 will see the coming to power of the Left. Even a large chunk of traditional Left voters may not support the alliance with the “Secular” Front as it goes against the grain of Left ideology. On May 2, the day of counting, everything will be clear. (IPA Service)
