: Forty-eight hours after the Aam Aadmi Party’s landslide victory in Delhi, the BJP will be facing a crucial Lok Sabha by-election in Bongaon in the North 24 Paraganas district, neighbouring Kolkata on Friday.
The election is crucial for the BJP as it takes place weeks after it engineered a minor split within the Trinamool Congress (TMC).
In January, TMC’s minister from the area, Manjul Krishna Thakur joined the BJP. For the TMC, the challenge is to establish that the Saradha Ponzi scheme scam has neither affected the party nor its chief Mamata Banerjee. The seat was vacated due to TMC MP Kapil Krishna Thakur’s untimely death.
The BJP is expected to put up a serious fight in the constituency situated adjacent to Bangladesh, marked for the Scheduled Castes and where an overwhelming two-third of the 12 lakh voters, have migrated from Bangladesh in the past. Thus, the most significant issue in the constituency – like in every election – is related to the status of obtaining permanent citizenship in India.
“People are disturbed since the BJP-led government amended the Citizenship Act (1955) in 2003 and showed no signs of repealing it, even after making big promises,” says former CPI(M) Cabinet Minister Kanti Biswas, who migrated from Bangladesh in the ’60s.
The amendment is debated in Bengal. “By the stroke of a pen,” the 2003 amendment by the National Democratic Alliance “denied citizenship to all those who arrived after March 25, 1971,” wrote political scientist Sekhar Bandyopadhyay. The BJP has tried to allay the allegation with the promise of renegotiation.
The other issue is internal. The BJP has denied a ticket to K.D. Biswas, who polled nearly 20 per cent votes — a record for the party — in Bongaon in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP has instead nominated Subrata Thakur, son of former TMC minister Manjul Krishna Thakur. The junior Thakur belongs to the powerful family of a sub-sect, Matua of the Namasudra community, which controls about one-third of votes in Bongaon. The move has deeply disheartened Mr. Biswas.
TMC has fielded Subrata Thakur’s aunt Mamata Bala Thakur, the wife of late TMC MP Kapil Krishna Thakur. TMC claims that she is ahead in the race as ostensibly Ms Thakur has been blessed by the Matua godmother, Binapani Debi.
This complex equation within the clan ensures that the winner is finally a Thakur of Matua sect, unless CPI (M)’s Devesh Das puts up an unexpected performance. While the CPI (M) polled over four lakh votes in 2014 elections, it was still about 1.5 lakh votes behind the TMC.
