Welfare wins in West Bengal

Mamata Banerjee’s welfare initiatives like Lakshmir Bhandar, strong grassroots organisation, and Muslim support base foil BJP’s ambitions.

Supporters of the Trinamool Congress celebrate the party’s lead during the counting of votes, outside party supremo Mamata Banerjee’s Kalighat residence in Kolkata, on June 4.  | Photo Credit: Swapan Mahapatra/PTI

On May 28, three days ahead of the seventh and final phase of the Lok Sabha election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: “This time, in the whole of Hindustan, the best performing State will be West Bengal. The Bharatiya Janata Party will gain maximum success in West Bengal.” On June 4, when the results were declared, these words would return to mock the BJP with biting irony, with the party getting a thrashing at the hands of the Trinamool Congress and managing to win only 12 out of the 42 seats—6 fewer than its 2019 number.

For Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress, this victory is particularly significant as it defied the exit polls that gave the BJP an edge, refuted the arguments of political analysts who predicted a debacle for the Trinamool, and established her party’s dominance at a time when it was most vulnerable in the face of multiple allegations of corruption and misrule. In the final tally, Trinamool won 29 seats—7 more than in 2019—the BJP 12, and the Congress 1 (it had 2 in 2019).

In a contest that was viewed as a direct fight between Mamata and Modi for control of West Bengal, Mamata can proudly claim that she has bested Modi twice in a row (the first time in the 2021 Assembly election), a feat achieved by few in today’s politics. “A lot of people underestimated me this time.... I was on the streets for the past two months and have been in politics for so many years, but I saw no sign of the exit poll predictions in the eyes of the people,” said Mamata after the results.

For both parties it was a struggle for survival ahead of the 2026 Assembly election. While a beleaguered Trinamool reeled against the ropes, buffeted by serious allegations of corruption such as the School Service Commission scam and the public distribution system scam, the BJP was confident of delivering the knockout blow. The saffron party saw this as its best opportunity to defeat the Trinamool. “We may never get another chance like this,” said a BJP source during the campaign phase.

There is no doubt that the credibility and image of the ruling party seemed to have hit a new low, with some of its top leaders in prison and the Central investigating agencies breathing down its neck. To make matters worse, widespread allegations of rampant corruption and high-handedness against the local party leadership further battered Trinamool’s image.

However, despite such overwhelming odds, certain factors worked in Trinamool’s favour from the start thwarting the BJP’s ambitions. The latter relied more on weakening its opponent than on strengthening its own organisation. When there were signs that the Trinamool could no longer take for granted the support of Muslim voters, who had from 2011 voted overwhelmingly for the party, the Centre’s implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) on March 11 came as a huge boon to Mamata ahead of the election and once again served to polarise Muslim votes in her favour.

Mamata Banerjee and her nephew and party leader Abhishek Banerjee at a press conference in Kolkata on June 4.  | Photo Credit: Bikas Das/AP

The polarisation was further defined by Modi’s repeated diatribes against Muslim “infiltrators” and Mamata’s constant assurances that she would not allow the CAA and the National Register of Citizens to be enforced in West Bengal. The Muslim population, which in 2011 stood at around 27 per cent, is a key factor in at least 130 of the 294 Assembly segments in the State.

While there was also a polarisation of Hindu votes in favour of the BJP—encouraged by Mamata’s sudden attack against socioreligious Hindu organisations such as the Ramakrishna Mission, the Bharat Sevashram Sangha, and ISKCON—the State government’s innumerable welfare schemes, particularly those targeting women, like the Lakshmir Bhandar and the Rupashree Prakalpa, prevented a Hindutva wave.

Highlights

• The State government’s innumerable welfare schemes, particularly those targeting women, like the Lakshmir Bhandar and the Rupashree Prakalpa, prevented a Hindutva wave.
• Mamata’s enhancement of the Lakshmir Bhandar scheme from Rs .500 to Rs. 1,000 for the general category and Rs. 1,200 for SC/ST women just ahead of the election not only kept her women support base intact but also neutralised the negative impact of Sandeshkhali.
• The BJP failed to refute the Trinamool’s counter-attacks of depriving the State of rural funds and could not put forward any convincing alternatives to Mamata’s welfare schemes.

With women voters accounting for around 49 per cent of the electorate, Mamata’s enhancement of the Lakshmir Bhandar scheme from Rs.500 to Rs.1,000 for the general category and Rs.1,200 for SC/ST women just ahead of the election not only kept her women support base intact but also neutralised the negative impact of Sandeshkhali, where women had risen up in protest against prolonged harassment and abuse at the hands of local Trinamool leaders. In the end, the Trinamool’s Haji Nurul Islam won the Basirhat seat with a margin of over three lakh votes against the BJP’s Rekha Patra, one of the alleged victims at Sandeshkhali.

In a nutshell, the Trinamool’s Lakshmir Bhandar and other schemes; its superior grassroots level organisation, bolstered by the presence of I-PAC, the professional political advocacy group that has been working for the Trinamool since 2019; and its ability to retain the support of Muslims and women helped it overcome the charges of corruption and the anti-incumbency sentiment working against it.

For the BJP, this was the worst defeat since 2019, when it emerged as the main opposition party in the State. In 2019, riding on a Modi wave, the BJP’s Lok Sabha seats went up from 2 to 18 and its vote share rose from 18 per cent (in 2014) to 40.7 per cent. It managed to snatch 14 seats from the ruling party, bringing its tally down to 22, and was looking all set to challenge the Trinamool for the Bengal throne in 2021. Although it failed miserably in that attempt (its vote percentage fell to 38.1 per cent while the Trinamool’s increased to 48 per cent), it could still take consolation in the fact that it was the main opposition in the Assembly and that its seats had increased from 3 to 77. This time, without any perceptible Modi wave or, for that matter, a “Ram temple wave”, the BJP lost eight of the seats it won in 2019: Cooch Behar, Bankura, Bardhaman-Durgapur, Barrackpur, Bardhaman-Asansol, Hooghly, Jhargram, and Medinipur.

Plagued by internal bickering and a seemingly directionless leadership, the BJP never looked strong enough to defeat the Trinamool. Its weak ground-level organisation did not allow it to gain maximum political mileage from the allegations and complaints against the ruling power, and its injudicious choice of candidates in certain constituencies cost it seats that were its for the taking. The BJP failed to refute the Trinamool’s counter-attacks of depriving the State of rural funds and could not put forward any convincing alternatives to Mamata’s welfare schemes.

Top BJP leaders, including former Union Ministers Nisith Pramanik, Subhas Sarkar, Debasree Chaudhuri, former BJP national vice president Dilip Ghosh, and veteran parliamentarian S.S. Ahluwalia, lost due to arbitrary selection of constituencies or ineffective tenures as MP. In certain cases, like in Barasat and Jhargram, BJP workers themselves expressed dissatisfaction at the selection of candidates.

Another obstacle that the BJP has not been able to overcome sufficiently is the perception that its culture is not an inherently Bengali one. The Trinamool’s long-standing campaign that the BJP is a party for the “bahiragata” (outsider) seems to have made a considerable imprint on the psyche of Bengali voters. Equally, while there has been a substantial polarisation of Hindu votes in favour of the BJP, many feel it is more due to the lack of an alternative to the Trinamool rather than an endorsement of the saffron party’s aggressive Hindutva politics.

Even if political opinions differed in the run-up to the election as to whether the Trinamool or the BJP would prevail, most political observers were certain that the Left-Congress tie-up would secure enough votes to at least be a factor again in West Bengal politics. But the combine could win only one seat: the Congress in Malda Dakshin. Even the Congress stalwart from Bengal, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the State Congress president and former leader of the Congress party in the Lok Sabha, lost in Baharampur, a seat he had been winning since 1999. His opponent was Yusuf Pathan, the former cricketer who made his political debut with the Trinamool.

Yusuf Pathan, former cricketer and the Trinamool’s candidate from Baharampur constituency, receives the certificate of victory after winning the seat, on June 4. | Photo Credit: PTI

In neighbouring Murshidabad, Mohammed Salim, Polit Bureau member of the CPI(M) and four-time MP (twice in the Lok Sabha and twice in the Rajya Sabha), also lost. According to the psephologist Biswanath Chakraborty, the polarisation of Hindu and Muslim votes negated any chance of a turnaround for the Left-Congress combine, which could only manage to secure 11.19 per cent of the votes. “The CAA, the communal clashes at Ram Navami, and Mamata Banerjee’s criticism of institutions like Ramakrishna Mission and other Hindu institutions, it all served to divide the votes between the Trinamool and the BJP,” he said.

The result indicates that the electoral dynamics has been the same in the State since the 2021 Assembly election, with the Trinamool standing head and shoulder above its rivals. With the State firmly under her control, it is no surprise that Mamata has now turned her attention to the Centre. Although she fought against the Left-Congress in the State, she had made it clear that her support for the INDIA bloc was unwavering.

After the results were declared, she announced that she had sent congratulations to Rahul Gandhi and other partners of the bloc. “It was I who had suggested that they [the Congress] should adjust with INDIA partners and that would fetch them 100 seats. See how they have got 100 seats today,” she said, with a hint of triumph and defiance in her voice.