Given the high stakes, the campaign in the state — one of the three along with Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to vote in all seven phases — saw the TMC, the BJP, and the Left-Congress alliance shrilly attack each other. For the TMC’s rivals, anti-corruption was a major plank against a government facing a raft of allegations of irregularities, from the school jobs scam to the ration and municipal scams. The Mamata government also received a lot of flak over the Sandeshkhali episode and the alleged sexual harassment and mistreatment of women there. Towards the latter stages, the TMC also faced criticism over Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s comment that a “few monks” Hindu monastic orders such as Ramakrishna Mission and Bharat Sevashram Sangha were helping the BJP in the state.
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The TMC, led from the front by the CM and her nephew and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee, hit back at the BJP as a party of outsiders, accusing it of using central agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to throttle the Opposition. The TMC, in return, built its campaign around attacking the BJP as a party indifferent to the interests of Bengal — hammering home the point about the Narendra Modi government withholding of central funds, especially for the MGNREGS scheme — and projected its successful welfare schemes, among them Lakshmir Bhandar under which women from the general category are eligible to receive Rs 1,000 monthly and women from Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities receive Rs 1,200 per month.
The elections started from the north that overwhelmingly supported the BJP last time by giving it seven of the eight parliamentary seats in the region. Among the factors that helped the BJP at the time was the sentiment for a separate state or Union Territory that has been a long-standing demand of many communities there, including Rajbongshis and Gorkhas. But as the 2021 results showed, the TMC managed to regain some ground in the north but the question remains if it can take advantage of a dent in BJP unity in some areas in the region, such as the Alipurduars constituency, and can manage to get back some of the seats it lost last time.
Another area where the TMC will look to make up ground is the Jangalmahal region in south Bengal where it lost all four Lok Sabha constituencies — Jhargram (ST-reserved), Bankura, Purulia, and Bishnupur (SC-reserved) — in 2019. Though the BJP organisation in south Bengal has taken a hit since the Assembly polls and the post-election violence that followed, regaining these constituencies will remain a tough task for the Mamata-led party. A lack of jobs, migration, water scarcity, and dissatisfaction with government doles are among the issues in this tribal belt.
Meanwhile, the Matua community’s vote will be crucial In constituencies such as Bangaon, Nadia, and Barasat. The electorally influential community had sided with the BJP last time over its promise to implement the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and give them citizenship. Still, in 2021 the TMC managed to regain some of the lost ground. With the CAA now operational, the BJP will be expecting to again receive the overwhelming support of Matuas but, amid the confusion in the community about the application procedure for acquiring citizenship, the TMC was able to take advantage of a fear of disenfranchisement during the process.
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For the Left and the Congress, contesting together in an alliance, the elections will be a test of survival and whether they will be able to increase their vote share. One of the major contestants from the Congress camp is state Congress chief and the party’s leader in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury who is up against former Indian men’s team cricketer Yusuf Pathan of the TMC. The CPM has fielded a mix of experienced leaders such as its state secretary Mohammad Salim (Murshidabad) and Sujan Chakraborty (Dum Dum) and young faces such as Srijan Bhattacharya and Pratikur Rahaman, both of whom are in the fray on Saturday. While Srijan will take on TMC youth leader Sayyoni Ghosh from Jadavpur, Pratikur faces a tough battle against Abhishek Banerjee,
Among the nine constituencies in and around Kolkata that will vote in the final phase is Basirhat, one of whose Assembly segments is Sandeshkhali. This constituency will be a prestige battle for the BJP, which led the protests against former TMC strongman Shahjahan Sheikh who is accused of sexually harassing women along with his supporters, and the TMC that has accused the Opposition in the state of blowing things out of proportion. In Basirhat, the BJP has fielded Rekha Patra, one of the women who has accused Sheikh of sexual harassment, while the TMC has fielded veteran leader Haji Nurul who had won the constituency in 2009.
All these seats, except for Jaynagar, are ones that the TMC has been winning since 2009, the election that indicated the shift in power in Bengal two years before the Left Front finally fell after ruling for over three decades. Whether this election too is the harbinger of any such change will be among the things to watch out for come June 4 when the results are declared.
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