CAA and the TMC’s solo act blur poll picture in Bengal
The TMC’s decision to be on its own hurts the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance while providing a leg-up to the BJP.
Two developments look likely to dominate electoral dynamics in West Bengal — the implementation of the Constitution (Amendment) Act (CAA) 2019 and the Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s decision to fly solo.
The notification of the CAA rules on March 11 set off celebrations among the Matuas. To recap, they are a sect of the Scheduled Caste Namasudras, who migrated from East Pakistan/Bangladesh in two waves — after Partition and in the 1970s. The enthusiastic reception has prompted sections of the media to declare this as an electoral game-changer that will swing the fortunes decisively in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
One of the reasons for the move was consolidating the Matua vote as the BJP launched an assault on a citadel they desperately want to conquer. But the gambit will not help the party break new ground. It’s essentially a rearguard action. The Matuas swing two Lok Sabha constituencies decisively: Bongaon in North 24 Parganas and Ranaghat in Nadia, while they have a scattered presence in other parts of these districts and less so elsewhere. The BJP holds both seats. The reason for implementing CAA is that it had been losing support among the Matuas because of the delay in implementation. They’ll win back this support only if the rollout is smooth. There are hurdles. It appears that applicants will have to furnish documentation/information that will be difficult to produce, relating to country of origin and date of entry, nationality, details of passports they don’t possess, and ancestral residence, a tall order.
Union home minister Amit Shah is slated to visit West Bengal to hard sell CAA, but that will not necessarily grease bureaucratic wheels. Unless the process moves at warp speed to make citizens of Matuas before they vote, they will suffer further disillusionment. Bengal votes in seven phases from April 19 to June 1 — Ranaghat votes on May 13 and Bongaon on May 20. The delay in implementation could create problems.
In North Bengal, large sections of the autochthonous Rajbanshis of six districts/constituencies — Darjeeling (the plains part), Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, Cooch Behar, North and South Dinajpur (the Raiganj and Balurghat seats) — are not unequivocally in favour of CAA, because it does not directly benefit them and entrenches groups they consider interlopers. As it is, between the 1971 and 2011 censuses, their share in the population fell from 80% to 30%. The BJP, which holds all six seats, could lose more on the heavily weighted North Bengal swings than what they stand to gain on the North 24 Parganas and Nadia roundabouts.
So, there are no straightforward readings of the citizenship tangle.
But the TMC’s solo act, finalised with the announcement of candidates for all 42 constituencies on March 10, could hurt it. The decision is puzzling. Certainly, no possibility existed of the Left and the TMC reaching a deal because of visceral animosities and the improbability of vote transfers. Moreover, the TMC could benefit if the Left fractures the Opposition space.
Equally, given the BJP now has 17 of 42 seats, consolidating votes by allying with the Congress was possible and potentially beneficial. The 2021 assembly election results highlight this. The polarising campaign run by the BJP worked — it got 38% of the vote. But it didn’t yield the desired results, because the anti-BJP vote consolidated behind the TMC, giving it 48% of the vote and a big majority. The Left Front was squeezed, getting only 4.73% of the vote. Since that debacle, the Left has raised its game. Banerjee could be hoping it will win back some of the 15% of the vote it lost, mostly to the BJP.
The 2019 Lok Sabha elections tell us the same story. The Left and the Congress lost almost 21% of their combined vote while the BJP increased its vote share by around 23% to reach almost 41% and win 18 seats, up 16 from 2014. It makes sense for Banerjee to have the Left in the fray.
This is not true of the Congress. Votes are transferable between the two parties because their bases are congruent. The Congress’s vote share has been falling, but the fact that it is concentrated in Malda and Murshidabad gives its numbers greater salience. The Congress also has significant support in North and South Dinajpur.
In 2019, the TMC lost the Raiganj seat to the BJP; Debasree Chaudhuri’s margin over Kanaia Lal Agarwal was around 60,000 votes, while the Congress’s Deepa Das Munshi polled over 80,000 votes. In Malda North, the BJP’s margin over the TMC was around 85,000 votes, while the Congress polled over 300,000 votes. In Balurghat, too, the Congress polled more than the BJP’s winning margin.
Given the obvious benefits, Banerjee’s refusal to deal with the Congress could be because of the games the latter played. While central leaders talked about seat adjustments, they did not do what they had to facilitate a deal — removing Behrampore MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury as president of the Pradesh Congress Committee. He is one of Banerjee’s fiercest critics, employing rhetoric that matches the stridency of BJP and Left leaders. With him around, a deal was impossible, because the task of campaigning and making sure votes got transferred on the ground would be overseen by Chowdhury, not leaders in Delhi.
In short, the TMC’s decision to be on its own hurts the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance while providing a leg-up to the BJP.
Suhit K Sen is an author and political commentator based in Kolkata. The views expressed are personal
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