Didi is no longer merciful. She is the real time 'aapa' and also unhappy. The Trinamool leadership is worried as because they are 'caught' !!
The Trinamool leadership is also caught the way Leftists were caught. Muslims may be captive Mamata Banerjee voters, but what is important to suggest here is that her well known 'Muslim appeasement' politics and governance model -- where Sheikh Shahjahans ought to be 'protected' - can at best influence only seven to eight seats.
Hence, if population division is a yardstick - the BJP can surprise enemies and friends by winning 33-34 seats out of 42 in West Bengal.
The Lotus party's mega gamble to increase its overall Lok Sabha tally certainly depends a lot on its performance in the Mamata-ruled state.
If they have done 'so well' in 2019 winning 18 Lok Sabha seats -- it need not be considered an accident. The saffron party has the 'data bank' to help itself retain its grip over 18 and add a few more. Of course, they will need to work harder and pursue the efforts more relentlessly.
Now take a closer look at the data:
** Out of 42 parliamentary seats in West Bengal -- there are 26 seats where Hindu population is slightly above 50 per cent.
** Now Muslim population with above 50 percent Muslim population
-- Bahrampur -- 53 percent -- This is Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury's forte since 1999 and Mamata Banerjee has fielded Muslim cricket star from Gujarat - Yusuf Pathan.
** Basirhat -- has 48 per cent Muslims (Sandeshkhali falls under this)
** Diamond Harbour (TMC's powerful leader Abhishek Banerjee is contesting and the segment has 40 percent Muslim voters)
MUSLIM voters at Jangipur is approximately is 65 percent. In 2019, Khalilur Rahaman won the seat. This segment was also represented by Congress veteran Pranab Mukherjee in 2004 and 2009 and after 2012 when he became President - his son Abhijit Mukherjee represented in 2012 by-polls and later in 2014.
Muslims with 30 percent population and above include :::
Jangipur (65 percent), Bahrampur (52 percent), Diamond Harbour (40 percent),
Balurghat (30 percent), Basirhat (48 per cent), Birbhum (40 percent), Bolpur (32 percent),
JoyNagar - 36 per cent,
(Only eight parliamentary segments)
** Thus the campaign that Muslim voters can save 'aapa' is not quite convincing as far as Lok Sabha election goes and wherein moreover, Narendra Modi himself is the face.
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| Blogger in Bengali 'summer' outfit !! |
Bengal Battle: Staunch nationalist BJP against strong regionalist Mamata
Kolkata/New Delhi
Change is the essence of life and more so in electoral politics in a politically sensitive state such as West Bengal.
So much has been their story of 'marginalisation' of the communists in West Bengal – that once ‘Lal Durg’ their 'red forte' – is today better known as a state where the fight is essentially drawn between Trinamool Congress and the BJP.
The Left Front’s vote share nosedived to such a level that out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state, they could not win even one in 2019. But the worst was still to come. In the 2021 assembly polls, the Left parties have lost all their seats.
In 2006, the CPI-M vote share was near 37 percent.
In the provincial polls in 2021, even Congress score was zero and hence the battle in this state in 2024 is between Mamata Banerjee's party and the Narendra Modi-led saffron party.
It is also true that the Congress and the communists may not know effectively how to handle Narendra Modi's electoral juggernaut in a newly polarised India especially after the Ram temple inauguration at Ayodhya.
However, in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee remains a formidable fighter trying to cherish some of the Left-liberal spirit. But her so-called religious tolerance vis-a-vis pluralism is interpreted here more as the 'Muslim appeasement'.
This is a serious poll issue which the BJP is trying to make use of.
Jhantu Dey, a social worker in Durgapur, says: "In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee faces a tough challenge this time as the prime minister Modi’s popularity amongst Bhadralok as a political strongman and BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda, continues to appeal to the large Hindu majority.
The charge that the BJP could indulge in widespread persecution of Muslims in the future is drawing Muslims towards the Trinamool camp".
Mamata Banerjee has accordingly planned her electoral strategy trying to attack the Modi-led dispensation of overseeing an unprecedented consolidation of power and allegedly eroding the independence of the judiciary and gross abuse of powers of agencies like CBI, ED and NIA.
The Trinamool Congress leaders sat on a 24-hour dharna on April 8 outside the Election Commission's office in Delhi demanding that the chiefs of CBI, NIA, ED and Income Tax Department be replaced.
A delegation of the party leaders, including Derek O'Brien, Dola Sen, Saket Gokhale and Sagarika Ghose also met a full bench of the Election Commission over their demands.
But the real worry in the Trinamool camp is whether an overwhelming
section of Hindu voters is buying their line especially in the context of what had surfaced in Sandeshkhali.
Trinamool's 'minority appeasement' with all its negative connotation came to light in Sandeshkhali putting the party on back-foot. Even Congress, the CPI-M and a newly floated party Indian Secular Front (ISF) has slammed the Trinamool government for such arrogant display of power in Sandeshkhali where Hindu Dalit women were attacked and tortured for years.
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| someone's 'Sheikh bhai' ... now cooling heels |
On Feb 27, the Indian Secular Front (ISF) MLA Naushad Siddiqui was stopped on his way to visit Sandeshkhali. Congress leaders were also stopped. In fact, after Sandeshkhali, the bitterness between Mamata Banerjee and state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has increased manifold.
Trinamool has also fielded Gujarat-based cricketer Yusuf Pathan from Bahrampur - the parliamentary seat Adhir Chowdhury has been winning for the last five term since 1999.
The BJP on March 24 sprang a mega surprise and announced a ticket to Ms Rekha Patra, a woman from Sandeshkhali who was a 'victim' and part of the protests against onetime powerful Trinamool Congress leader Sheikh Shahjahan.
She has been fielded from the Basirhat Lok Sabha constituency. Sandeshkhali, which falls under the Basirhat Lok Sabha seat, has been in the limelight for the past three months as several women led protests against Sheikh Shahjahan and his aides, accusing them of sexual assault and land grab.
For a while, the West Bengal police went slow and soft on Sheikh Shahjahan but the case is now with the ED and he is behind bars.
"It's possible only in the BJP that the face of Sandeshkhali movement Ms Rekha Patra has been made the party nominee from Basirhat," says BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari.
On the other hand, in another row related to a NIA probe, Mamata Banerjee told an election rally at Bankura that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had gone to Bhupatinagar in Purba Medinipur district without informing the local police.
The Bengal police has also filed an FIR accusing NIA officials of molestation against local women. "The Prime Minister is coming to West Bengal to address election rallies. I have no issues with that. But the way he is saying that stern action will be taken against the opposition over corruption after the Lok Sabha poll
results is unacceptable," Mamata said, trying to make a dent among voters.
She is little worried as several surveys are giving the BJP an upper hand in this year's parliamentary polls.
Analyst Ramakanto Shanyal says, "Trinamool leadership knows the importance of parliamentary polls. In 2009 polls, Mamata's party had won 19 seats and two years later in 2011 the Left was ousted. In 2019 polls, the BJP had won 18 and in 2021 assembly though she survived, the BJP gained ground immensely. Mamata also survived because all Left and Congress votes in the last round of polling
came to her. But now if BJP manages 22-25 seats; her nightmare may just begin".
BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, a former Trinamool Congressman, and former state unit BJP president Dilip Ghosh are already stating that if the voters want the days of Mamata Banerjee as Chief Minister of West Bengal can be numbered.
Factors those working on ground:
** A CPI-M veteran in Siliguri (North Bengal) says: “The anti-incumbency against the Trinamool Congress government is feeding the BJP".
** Siliguri-based political observer Ramakanto Shanyal says in parts of north Bengal in and around Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling regions, the Bengali voters are irked by Mamata Banerjee's politics of opportunism. In the past as in 2021 she has allied with the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha, which is seeking "division of Bengal".
$$$ Some say despite various attempts, Mamata Banerjee's rally at Siliguri and other North Bengal towns such as Malda have not been much successful. Either Congress or the BJP have gained ground in this region.
%% The BJP leaders now enthusiastically claim that the pro-change wave (real Poriborton) is in favour of the saffron party. They also say a large section of Trinamool foot-soldiers and supporters who come for Didi's rallies across the state could actually vote against Trinamool on the voting day.
Moreover, many say the success of the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls has shown its growing acceptability. The erstwhile key players, the Left and the Congress are now marginalised forces in the state.
$$$$ The BJP penetration was good in some districts like Birbhum. The Lotus party maintained lead in four of 11 assembly segments in 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The Trinamool vote-share has also reduced as Mamata's party in 2019 could maintain lead only in seven segments – a drop from nine assembly seats it won earlier.
BJP's Doodh Kumar Mondal had also given a tough fight to popular actress and sitting Trinamool MP from Birbhum, Shatabdi Roy. The BJP nominee could poll over 5,65,000 votes.
In 2024, Trinamool Congress has fielded Shatabdi Roy yet again and the BJP candidate is Debashis Dhar.
$$
In another parliamentary seat Bolpur, also a former red bastion won by Somnath Chatterjee seven times, the BJP candidate Ram Prasad Das came second polling 5,92,000 votes recording a swing of 25 per cent as against previous performance by the BJP. The seat was won by Asit Kumar Mal and he has been again fielded by Trinamool Congress. The BJP candidate this time is Ms Priya Saha.
On April 9th, the Election Commission decided to rush 100 additional companies of central paramilitary forces to the state. This is in addition to the 177 companies earlier earmarked for the state, which has reported incidents of political violence over the past several years.
Of the 177 companies deployed earlier, 33 are from CRPF, 97 from BSF, 17 from CISF, 10 from ITBP, 15 from SSB and 5 from RPF. The 100 additional companies comprise 55 from CRPF and 45 from BSF. These include troops currently posted in Manipur, which was hit by ethnic violence last year.
The fresh deployment comes days after a team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) was attacked by a mob when it went to Bhupatinagar in Purba Medinipur district to probe a 2022 blast that killed three people.
Notably, in January this year, a team of the Enforcement Directorate had come under attack when it visited Sandeshkhali village to probe corruption allegations against now expelled Trinamool strongman Sheikh Shahjahan.
CAA – a major issue
The Modi government on March 11 announced the enforcement of the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), more than four years after it was passed in parliament. The law aims to give citizenship to "persecuted" religious minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, who entered India before December 2014. It lists Hindus, Christians, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains as minorities, but omits Muslims.
Modi's government intends to give a "permanent address" to these persecuted Hindus from the three Muslim-dominated nations. Critics of the law say it excludes Muslims who migrated to India, mainly from Bangladesh. There are some one million Bangladeshi Muslims, 90 percent of them living in Indian states bordering that country.
They will not be welcome in India and will be either deported or rendered stateless.
Hence, Muslim groups and rights bodies have opposed the implementation of the law. Massive protests were witnessed at the time of the CAA’s passing in December 2019 forcing the Modi government to delay formulating the rules for implementation.
But a large number of Hindu Matua population would be benefitting and they will influence outcome in eight to ten parliamentary segments.
ends
(Important Contests)
Diamond Harbour:
- Abhishek Banerjee, Trinamool candidate is the sitting MP and also the powerful nephew of Mamata Banerjee. Abhishek is serving his second term and had secured nearly 56 percent of the votes in the 2019 elections.
--- Indian Secular Front (ISF) is likely to contest independently. But the CPI-M has nominated a young leader Pratikur Rahaman to challenge Abhishek Banerjee and if he takes away substantial Muslim votes; things could become even tougher for Mamata's nephew.
# Asansol - Trinamool candidate is sitting MP Shatrughan Sinha and here the BJP remains indecisive after it drew flak for fielding Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh. BJP has fielded S S Ahluwalia. Though a Sikh he actually hails from Asansol.
# Tamluk - BJP candidate is former judge of the Calcutta High Court, Abhijeet Banerjee and this contest here will be keenly seen even from national perspective as Justice Banerjee has been very vocal and aggressive during his stint as the judge.
Left -- Past Glories and still in red
Electorally, best performance by the Left parties came in 2004 when they had 59 members in Lok Sabha. From West Bengal the CPI-M won 26 seats alone. The Left tally from West Bengal stood at 35 and their ‘comrade’ Somnath Chatterjee became Speaker in the House of the people.
It was the Left Front that actually helped anchor UPA-I and so much has been the communists’ say in the running of a dispensation run by 'pro-liberalisation economist' Dr Manmohan Singh that an effective Left-UPA Coordination panel was formally set up.
But the heydays were short lived as Prakash Karat – the hardliner CPI(M) general secretary was adamant against the Indo-US Nuke Deal.
In 2008, the anguished Left parties withdrew support to the Manmohan Singh government. The relationship could not have gone so bad at any worse time. Thanks to Nandigram and Singur, the Left Front government headed by Basudeb Bhattacharya was at all low in popularity graph. The Congress easily walked into the arms of Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee and thus the communists rule came to an end in their own bastion in 2011.
:: Data shows the trend
2004 – CPI – M – 26 seats and RSP, Forward Bloc got three each. Total Left seats were 35.
Trinamool Congress suffered major jolt and only Mamata Banerjee could win
Congress had won six seats
In 2009 – Trinamool made a major comeback and won 19 seats. Its ally Congress got six and the Left tally came down to 17. In 2014, TMC won 34 and in the 2019 polls – it came down to 22 as against 18 by the BJP. The Left tally was zero in 2019 and the Congress could win 2 including Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
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