Trinamool's seasoned defence against the BJP's spin attack
The strategy of bringing in star campaigners from outside and sidelining state leaders helped the TMC characterise the BJP as a "party of outsiders".
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has successfully shepherded her party to a convincing win in the just-concluded general elections. Before we start parsing the results, a word on the prognostications of the pollsters would not be out of place.
The exit polls almost unanimously had the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pulling ahead of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) both in terms of seats and vote share. A ‘poll of polls’, for instance, gave the BJP 23 seats and the TMC 18. One exit poll predicted 26-31 seats for the BJP against 11-14 for the TMC, while also placing the respective vote shares at 46% and 40%.
The TMC won 29 seats against the BJP’s 12. The TMC’s vote share has risen from 43.3 per cent to around 46 per cent, while the BJP’s vote share has fallen from 40.7 per cent to around 39%. The point of beginning with the exit poll projections is to gesture at their failure to look at the situation on the ground.
A number of observers who have been keeping their ears to the ground foresaw a diminution of the BJP’s vote share and consequently their seat strength because of a number of developments leading up to the declaration of the elections on March 16 and subsequently during the nomination process and campaigning.
In the run-up to the announcement, it appeared that the BJP had decided to fashion its campaigning around February’s Sandeshkhali agitation, mostly led by women, against land grabs, intimidation, physical assault, corruption and, crucially, the sexual oppression of large numbers of women, orchestrated by Sheikh Shahjahan, a local TMC functionary.
There was no real Plan B. Thus, when the state government moved, albeit a little dilatorily, to arrest the culprits and begin the process of restituting plots of land converted from agricultural fields to water bodies for pisciculture, some of the fore of the campaign was blunted.
Then, when a series of ‘sting videos’ emerged suggesting that the movement against sexual exploitation was orchestrated by state BJP leaders by offering inducements, alongside retractions of allegations of sexual abuse by a number of women, the TMC was given the opportunity draw the sting from the agitation. In fact, Banerjee sought, it now appears successfully, to paint the inducements as an attempt to dishonour Bengal and its women. Sandeshkhali is in the Basirhat constituency, which the TMC’s Haji Nurul Islam is winning by a landslide despite being pitted against the BJP’s Rekha Patra, one of the leaders of the movement.
It was debatable from the outset whether the Sandeshkhali issue would have a statewide resonance, given that Banerjee has created a redoubtable constituency among women by rolling out a number of welfare schemes specific to them — Lakshmir Bhandar, a monthly stipend for which all women are eligible, with the objective of compensating them for unpaid domestic work and giving them some financial independence; Kanyashree, a scheme for schoolgoing girls; and Rupashree, a stipend to help with wedding expenses for disadvantaged families. Swasthya Sathi, a health insurance scheme without means testing, is also immensely popular.
The other string in the BJP’s bow was the education scam. But the TMC managed to neutralise that as well, when the Supreme Court passed a verdict favourable to the government. On April 22, the Calcutta High Court passed an order cancelling over 25,000 school jobs on account of irregularities in the hiring process though only a fraction of them had been contested in the first place. This gave the Opposition ammunition. The BJP tore into the TMC, without expressing sympathy for those who had lost their jobs.
On May 7, the Supreme Court stayed the order, citing precisely the fact that not all the jobs cancelled had been affected by the recruitment ‘scam’. This enabled the TMC to turn the issue into one of livelihoods. After the high court order, Banerjee had said she would fight it and not allow people to lose their livelihoods. After the Supreme Court order, she claimed vindication, painting the Opposition as unfeeling and alleging a nexus between the BJP and some high court judges. Her position gained credibility because Abhijit Gangopadhyay, the judge who had originally been trying some of the recruitment cases, quit, joined the BJP and was given a ticket to contest from the Tamluk constituency, the backyard of Suvendu Adhikari, the BJP’s leader of the Opposition. Gangopadhyay is leading by a substantial margin.
The BJP scored a few self-goals in the process of managing the elections in West Bengal. Their nomination process was slow, which gave the TMC an early-mover advantage. The nominations were quixotic in some cases as well, especially when winning candidates were shuffled around. Former state president Dilip Ghosh was moved from Medinipur to Bardhaman-Durgapur, though he was a local man. Asansol Dakshin MLA Agnimitra Paul was parachuted in to replace him. She lost to the TMC’s June Maliah. SS Ahluwalia, a winning candidate, was shifted to Asansol to accommodate Ghosh. He has lost to the TMC’s sitting MP Shatrughan Sinha.
The strategy of bringing in star campaigners from outside and sidelining state leaders helped the TMC characterise the BJP as a "party of outsiders". Just as it did during the 2019 Assembly elections.
The TMC had been on a winning wicket all along despite the taint allegations, and both pre-election surveys and the exit polls.
Suhit K Sen is an independent journalist and researcher. The views expressed are personal
Continue reading with HT Premium Subscription
