Ahead of the 2021 polls, Banerjee is weighed down by an anti-incumbency of two terms, dissent brewing within the TMC ranks and the emergence of a power-hungry BJP.
The 2021 West Bengal assembly polls are set to be a contest between the ruling Trinamool Congress led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the Bharatiya Janata Party with the Congress-Left alliance trying to emerge as the kingmaker.
The polls are being watched with keen interest across the country given the dogfight style of politics playing out between the TMC, trying hard to protect its turf, and the BJP, desperate to wrest power from the ruling party.
The polls, likely April-May next year, are going to be an acid test for Mamata Banerjee who is aiming for a hat-trick by winning a third consecutive term as chief minister.
Banerjee’s emergence as a power centre in the eastern state in 2011 marked the end of the 34-year reign of the CPI-M led Left Front government headed by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.
She became a chief minister by winning 184 of the total 294 assembly seats in the 2011 polls and returned to power with a bigger mandate in the 2016 elections by winning 211 seats.
However, ahead of the 2021 polls, Banerjee is weighed down by an anti-incumbency of two terms, dissent brewing within the TMC ranks and the emergence of a power-hungry BJP.
The Congress had an alliance with the TMC in 2011 polls but joined hands with the Left parties in the 2016 elections in which the Grand Old Party won 44 seats, the Communist Party of India-Marxist 26, Communist Party of India 1, Revolutionary Socialist Party 3 and the Forward Block 2.
The BJP was a marginal player in 2016 with just 3 seats in the assembly but gradually expanded its footprint across the state, largely at the expense of the CPI-M, which lost its Bengali Hindu vote bank to the saffron party.
The Congress-Left grouping came across as a half-baked alliance in the 2016 assembly polls and the parties could not carry forward the pact in the 2019 national elections, which came as a shocker for them.
The Congress could win just two of the total 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal while the Left parties were decimated. The TMC maintained the lead with 22 seats but the BJP with 18 seats surprised everyone.
Having learnt the lessons, the Congress-Left are determined to sink their differences in the 2021 elections to fight the BJP and the TMC together but there is no guarantee they will not bargain hard during the seat-sharing talks.
Citing the recent Bihar assembly polls, in which the Congress’ poor show had proved to be a limiting factor for the opposition Grand Alliance led by the Rashtriya Janata Dal, and relatively better performance of the Left parties, the Left leaders in West Bengal have urged the Grand Old Party to be realistic while demanding seats.
However, the Congress strategists cite the party’s better to strike rate in the 2016 West Bengal assembly polls saying the Grand Old Party won 44 of the 90 seats it contested and therefore should get a bigger share of seats this time.
Of late, the Congress named former union minister Jitin Prasad as the new AICC in charge of West Bengal and brought back Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, party leader in the Lok Sabha, as the new state unit chief.
Chowdhury, who headed the state unit earlier also, slammed both the TMC and the BJP describing them as two sides of the same coin but the ground reality is that the Congress has weakened over the years and has lost several party leaders to the TMC.
The Congress’ vote share reduced by half from 12 percent in 2016 to 6 percent in 2019 while the vote share of the CPI-M dropped from 19 percent to 7 percent during the same period.
Congress managers acknowledged the Left too has been weakened in the state but still opted for an alliance to keep the semblance of a third front.
Besides seat-sharing, another sticking point between the Congress and the Left parties is over the projection of Chowdhury as the chief ministerial face of the alliance. The Left parties had opposed the idea saying the focus should instead be on defeating the TMC and the BJP.
The Congress-Left strategy is to win a sufficient number of seats which will allow the grouping to play the role of a kingmaker and support the TMC, if needed, to keep the BJP out of power.
On its part, the BJP wants to avoid that situation and is, therefore, trying hard to cross the half-way mark at 148 seats.
The BJP’s ambition in West Bengal has been fuelled by the fact that its vote share went up significantly from 10 percent in 2016 to 40 percent in 2019.
In sharp contrast to the Congress-Left alliance, which is yet to start seat-sharing talks, the BJP’s campaign rolled out early November when union home minister Amit Shah visited West Bengal in the midst of do-or-die Bihar assembly elections to declare that his party will win 200 seats in the eastern state.
That may be a tall claim but the BJP’s aggressive campaign has put pressure on the Trinamool Congress. Citing the recent attack on the convoy of BJP president JP Nadda, the saffron party is trying to build a poll narrative that the law and order situation has crippled in the state under TMC rule.
Former BJP leader and West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar’s regular confrontation with the TMC over the past years and a recent report to the centre expressing concern over the deteriorating law and order situation in the state indicate the sustained efforts of the saffron party to corner the ruling party.
Mamata Banerjee’s sharp attacks on PM Modi and his controversial policies like demonetisation, payment of GST dues, Citizenship Amendment Act and the three contentious farm laws too are clear pointers to the bitterness between the BJP and the TMC.
The latest setback for Mamata is strongman Suvendu Adhikari quitting the TMC to look for greener pastures (read the BJP) while there may be others in the pipeline. Earlier, the BJP had co-opted another TMC strongman Mukul Roy, now vice-president in the saffron party.
The entry of Lok Sabha member from Hyderabad Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM in the West Bengal poll fray has also caused anxiety in the TMC and the Congress camps.
AIMIM is upbeat after winning five seats in the recent Bihar assembly polls and is now set to dent the traditional Muslim vote banks of both the TMC and the Congress.
Muslims comprise 27 percent of voters in West Bengal and can be a deciding factor in around 90 seats. Interestingly, both the TMC and the Congress have accused Owaisi of playing the saffron party’s game by dividing the non-BJP votes.
How Mamata Banerjee, a grassroots politician who knows the pulse of the people, takes on these challenges remains to be seen.
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