Trinamool, BJP locked in an intense, evenly-matched battle in West Bengal

In many pivotal constituencies like Malda, Murshidabad, Birbhum, and Bardhaman, the parties have pulled out all the stops to outflank each other.

The massive Ram Navami rally in Muslim-dominated Ilambazar on April 17, with its tribal motif and aggressive body language, indicated that the Sangh may have been quietly strengthening its organisational base.  | Photo Credit: JAYANTA SHAW

Tuku Bagdi of Kamarpara, a tribal village in Bolpur Lok Sabha constituency, has little to complain about, in spite of poverty and her husband’s failing health. After all, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has hiked the financial assistance for women under the Lakshmir Bhandar scheme from Rs.500 to Rs.1,200 for the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe category and Rs.1,000 for the general category. In April, Tuku and other women of her village received the increased allowance of Rs.1,200, and it makes a difference. “It is such a relief to get this money every month. My husband is ill, and my daughter is just 8. It is getting increasingly difficult to get a regular income. We will always vote for Mamata didi for this,” Tuku told Frontline.

The village was abuzz with preparations to celebrate Ram Navami. Speakers blared out chants from the local temple, and the villagers looked on as the priest went through the various steps of worship. But that was not indicative of any leaning towards the saffron party, for there was little support for any party other than the Trinamool  Congress in this little village.

Trinamool banks on hiked allowance for women

For the ruling Trinamool, much hinges on how far the higher Lakshmir Bhandar allowance can counter anti-incumbency sentiments, make the electorate turn a blind eye to the allegations of corruption, and neutralise the beating the party’s image took recently at Sandeshkhali. As the Lok Sabha election rolls into the third and fourth phases, in which 12 seats (Malda North, Malda South, Jangipur, and Murshidabad on May 7; Baharampur, Krishnanagar, Ranaghat, Bardhaman Purba, Bardhaman-Durgapur, Asansol, Birbhum, and Bolpur on May 13), go to the polls, the Trinamool and its main opponent, the BJP, are evenly poised. For the Left-Congress, it will be a desperate fight to retain the two seats under their belt, Malda South and Baharampur.

The Congress has been winning from Malda South for the last 44 years. From 1980 to 2006, it went to the legendary Congressman A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury, and after his death, to his brother Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury. However, with Malda North falling into the BJP’s hands in 2019, and certain new electoral trends emerging in Malda South, neither the Congress nor Ghani Khan’s kin can take the support of the electorate for granted any more.

Interestingly, in 2019, the saffron party came a close second in Malda South, where the Muslim population is over 55.5 per cent. While the Congress secured 35.1 per cent of the votes, the BJP got 34.4 per cent, and the Trinamool 27.7 per cent. The BJP had a clear lead in three Assembly segments, and the Congress in four. But in the 2021 Assembly election, the Trinamool won six of the Assembly seats under Malda South; the BJP managed to win only one, English Bazaar. With the Hindu and Muslim votes getting increasingly polarised and the Trinamool getting stronger in the region, political observers do not rule out the possibility of the BJP pulling off a good performance in case of a division of votes between the Congress and the Trinamool.

Such polarisation gave it Malda North, where the Hindu population is marginally higher. In a clear effort to win back some of the Hindu votes, the Trinamool has fielded a former police officer, Prasun Banerjee, instead of re-nominating Mausam Benazir Noor, its former MP, from Malda North. In the tri-cornered contest between the BJP’s sitting MP, Khagen Murmu; Prasun Banerjee; and the Congress’ Mostaque Alam, the odds lie in the BJP’s favour.

In Baharampur, another Congress bastion and a constituency with more than 66 per cent Muslims, State Congress president and sitting MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has reason to be wary of a polarisation of votes on religious lines. The Trinamool has fielded the former cricket star Yusuf Pathan. But the BJP has managed to make a base in the Assembly segments where the Hindu population is relatively higher.

Incidentally, the Baharampur Assembly segment, which gave Adhir his highest leads in five consecutive Lok Sabha victories, was won by the BJP in 2021. Although there is no chance of the saffron party winning here, it can queer the pitch for the Congress. The recent communal flare-ups in the region have given the Congress more reason to be nervous.

Highlights

• The Trinamool Congress and BJP are evenly poised as elections roll into third and fourth phases of the Lok Sabha election.
• For the Left, the Congress, it will be a desperate fight to retain the two seats under their belt, Malda South and Baharampur.
• Both the Trinamool and the BJP stand to gain from religious polarisation.

Adhir Chowdhury and Md Salim

Baharampur and adjacent Murshidabad are in fact two of the most important and interesting seats in this election, where Adhir and the State secretary of the CPI(M), Md Salim, are contesting with the support of each other’s party. Where once the two parties fought violently for political space, they now share the same hoardings, with pictures of Adhir and Salim in the same frame.

The BJP won the Murshidabad Assembly seat in 2021. But the main fight in the Muslim-majority parliamentary seat will be between the Trinamool and the Left-Congress. A niggling concern for the Left is that its former ally, the Indian Secular Front (ISF) founded by the influential Islamist cleric Abbas Siddiqui, has also fielded a candidate in Murshidabad. Although not very strong in the area, the ISF nevertheless enjoys a not-so-negligible support, particularly among Muslim youth. Salim, however, is confident that with the Left and the Congress fighting together, he will prevail. “Never has the understanding between our two parties been stronger,” he told Frontline..

Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury with party leaders on his way to file his nomination papers for the Baharampur Lok Sabha seat in Murshidabad on April 24. The presence of the red flags of the CPI(M) shows how far the two parties have come since their years of bitter rivalry in the State. | Photo Credit: UTPAL SARKAR

The Jangipur constituency, best known as the seat won by former President Pranab Mukherjee, slipped out of the Congress’ hands in 2019 and is not likely to return to it this time.

Both the Trinamool and the BJP stand to gain from religious polarisation. While the Trinamool’s promise that it will not implement the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) may enable the party to reconsolidate its straying Muslim support base, it may also see Hindu votes gravitating to the BJP. On the flip side, a division of Muslim votes, which the saffron party needs desperately in order to win more seats, may not happen.

In this situation, Ram Navami skirmishes became one of the focal points in all the campaigns. While Mamata Banerjee squarely blamed the BJP and said “everything was pre-planned”, the BJP and the Congress held the ruling party responsible for the violence. Referring to one of Mamata’s speeches in which she anticipated violence on Ram Navami, Adhir said: “It is all because of the Chief Minister. She is not an astrologer, yet she could predict violence.”

Before the Ram Navami violence, the BJP’s brand of Hindutva seemed to be losing momentum in Bengal. Arijit Singha, the owner of a grocery store in Bolpur town that also sells BJP flags and Hindutva theme-based banners, admitted that sales had come down. “There were many sales during the Ram temple inauguration, but the enthusiasm seems to have diminished in the past two months,” he said.

In a setback for the BJP, its Birbhum candidate Debasish Dhar found his candidacy cancelled over a technicality. The party is a growing force in Birbhum and adjoining Bolpur, though it has not come close to beating the Trinamool. Binod Kumar Shau, a businessman, believes the BJP, with its internal problems, does not stand a chance in Bolpur: “Their organisation is comparatively weaker, and they are only seen during elections. Besides, people now need employment, and bearable conditions to live in, not Ram mandir. Is the BJP giving that?”

However, the massive Ram Navami rally in Muslim-dominated Ilambazar on April 17, with its tribal motif and aggressive body language, indicated that the Sangh Parivar may have been quietly strengthening its organisational base. Interestingly, the Trinamool tried to upstage the BJP with its own Ram Navami rallies, and in some of them, the party’s supporters were even heard chanting “Jai Sri Ram”, a slogan identified with the BJP.

Md Salim of the CPI(M) campaigning in his constituency, Murshidabad. | Photo Credit: JAYANTA SHAW

The Trinamool is a clear favourite in both Birbhum and Bolpur constituencies. But Anubrata Mandal, the Trinamool’s organisational mainstay in Birbhum district, is behind bars and therefore unavailable for election work, and that is a matter of concern for the ruling party.

In Birbhum, the Trinamool’s massive margins in the Muslim-majority segments of Murarai, Hasnan, and Nalhati have repeatedly ensured its victory, although the BJP led in four of the seven Assembly segments (including Sainthia, where it led by 0.1 per cent) in the last election. Three-time MP Satabdi Roy insists her development work has effectively countered anti-incumbency in Birbhum. But poverty, lack of infrastructure, and the corruption of local-level leaders have alienated a sizeable section of the people from the Trinamool.

In Bardhaman district, once the impenetrable fortress of the CPI(M), the BJP is likely to face a stiff challenge in the industrial constituencies of Bardhaman-Durgapur and Asansol, which it won in 2019. It lost the Asansol seat to the Trinamool in a byelection in 2022. The BJP’s S.S. Ahluwalia won Bardhaman-Durgapur by 2,439 votes in 2019. This time, he is contesting from Asansol, while former BJP State president Dilip Ghosh will fight from Bardhaman-Durgapur.

In 2021, the Trinamool won back its political ground in the two constituencies, winning six out of the seven Assembly segments of Bardhaman-Durgapur, and five of Asansol; the BJP won one and two seats respectively. Moreover, the BJP’s chances are also hampered by inner-party conflicts, particularly in Asansol, where it had won twice in a row.

Recently, after the much-delayed announcement of Ahluwalia’s candidacy, two factions of the BJP got into an unseemly brawl in the presence of the candidate. Interestingly, the Trinamool has fielded two celebrities who were former BJP MPs: the film star Shatrughan Sinha from Asansol and the former cricketer Kirti Azad from Bardhaman-Durgapur. For the Bardhaman Purba seat, which was won by the Trinamool in 2019, the BJP has fielded the folk singer Ashim Kumar Sarkar, its MLA from Haringhata.

Mohua Moitra fights prestige battle in Krishnanagar

Krishnanagar, which will go to the polls in the fourth phase on May 13, is a keenly watched constituency. The Trinamool’s Mahua Moitra will seek to retain her seat for the second time. Moitra, who has been at the centre of a cash-for-query controversy, was expelled from the Lok Sabha last December and is now under the radar of the Central investigating agencies. One of the most outspoken critics of the Narendra Modi government, Moitra is pitted against the BJP’s Amrita Roy, a descendant of the royal family of Krishnanagar, and against a strong Left-Congress candidate, the veteran CPI(M) legislator S.M. Saadi. For Moitra, it is a prestige battle in a seat rife with factionalism within the ruling party.

In adjacent Ranaghat, with a more than 40 per cent Matua (a Scheduled Caste community that had migrated from Bangladesh) population, the implementation of the CAA has put the BJP’s sitting MP Jagannath Sarkar in a stronger position. The CAA has been a long-standing demand of the Matua community, which shifted its allegiance from the Trinamool to the BJP in 2019. In 2021, the BJP won six of the seven Assembly segments of the Ranaghat Lok Sabha constituency.

In a bid to woo back the Matua vote, the Trinamool has fielded Mukut Mani Adhikari, the BJP legislator from Ranaghat Dakshin who defected to the Trinamool in March. However, according to Jagannath Sarkar, this will not affect his chances. “In fact, this is good for us. Mukut Mani’s defection has given rise to a lot of resentment in the Trinamool camp; we expect a chunk of Trinamool votes to come our way,” he told Frontline.