Within the first couple of hours of counting on Thursday, two things were evident on ground in West Bengal. One, the BJP emerged as the main rival of the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal with a good lead in 18 of 42 seats. Till late in the evening the BJP maintained the lead. The BJP polled as much as 40% votes – only three and half percent less than the TMC – which is the saffron party’s best performance in Bengal since its inception in 1980.
The TMC, which is ahead of the saffron party in 22 seats, mostly in south of Bengal, has a bigger reason to worry.
The Left which acted as a buffer between the TMC and BJP, has virtually disappeared. The CPI-M polled only 6.8% votes, while the Left Front’s key constituents polled a total of 7.73%, a drop of 22%. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the CPI-M had polled 19.75% votes and bagged two seats. Both the CPI-M and Left Front drew a blank as CPI-M’s Bengal secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra described the results as “unprecedented.” Since 1964, when the CPI-M was founded, this is the worst performance of the party in Bengal.
The BJP’s share, on the other hand, rose from 17% in 2014 to 40% – a jump of 23% even when the counting was on. The victory is indeed attributed to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah who led the battle for Bengal from the front, addressing 34 meetings between them in six weeks.
Where did BJP perform
The BJP has performed well across the State. As far as the trends till late on Thursday night, the BJP was leading comfortably in nearly all of six seats in north Bengal – Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Raiganj and Balurghat. Surprisingly, in the Muslim-majority district of Malda in central Bengal, the BJP was leading in at least one seat, Malda North
“This is because of deep communal polarisation. While Muslim votes got divided, the Hindu voted en bloc,” said a senior Malda journalist.
In the other central Bengal district, Murshidabad, the TMC is set to win two seats out of three. In Jangipur (Murshidabad district), Congress candidate and former MP Abhijeet Mukherjee, son of former President Pranab Mukherjee, is expected to be defeated by the TMC candidate, while in Murshidabad, the sitting CPI-M MP is trailing. Congress’ incumbent Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury won for the fifth time in a row in Baharampur, also in Murshidabad district, while Md Salim of the CPI-M is on the verge of defeat in Raiganj.
The Congress too slipped from 9.69% in 2014 to 5.4% in 2019, but was leading in two seats till late Thursday night.
In the five Jharkhand-bordering districts – Jhargram, Medinipur, Purulia, Bankura and Bishnupur – which have a sizeable tribal population, the BJP is comfortably ahead of the TMC. Even a TMC veteran, Subrata Mukherjee, is trailing far behind the BJP’s Subhash Sarkar. The BJP even bagged seats that have considerable Dalit refugee voters like Bongaon, Ranaghat or Hooghly in south Bengal – considered a TMC bastion.
Where did TMC gain
If the TMC is comfortable anywhere that is in its stronghold in south Bengal. The party is leading in 20 seats in south Bengal, out of 22. However, it may still lose a couple of seats as the margin is very narrow after ten rounds of counting. Till 8 pm, the TMC polled 43.5% votes, which is 3.5% more than in last Lok Sabha polls. However, compared to the 2016 Assembly poll, the TMC’s share has dropped by about 1.5% but it may go up slightly when the final results are announced.
TMC chief Mamata Banerjee did not meet the press on Thursday and most of its leaders remained tightlipped. A senior leader said – on condition of anonymity – once all the results are out, Ms. Banerjee will call a meeting of all the senior leaders in a day or two. “Nothing can be said before that,” he said.
