Tuesday’s by-election results in West Bengal are nothing less than ominous for the ruling All India Trinamool Congress in the State. The Bharatiya Janata Party has won the seat in North 24 Paraganas and polled nearly six times more votes compared to last election in Chowringhee constituency in south-central Kolkata. In Chowringhee, AITC’s margin has reduced by nearly 45,000 votes, a huge drop for an Assembly election, even while the party had a tie-up with Congress in 2011. In Basirhat Dakshin (South) in North 24 Paraganas, BJP has defeated AITC’s candidate, former skipper of Indian football team, by about 1600 votes. CPI-M had won the Basirhat Dakshin in 2011, defeating AITC by a handsome margin. The election proved, once again, that Left Front has failed to recover lost ground and that a huge polarization on communal lines, esp. in Basirhat Dakshin constituency, adjacent to Bangladesh, helped BJP.
The by-election has established that BJP is a force to reckon with in Bengal. While in Chowringhee constituency the party has finished second, in Basirhat, BJP tested victory – first time in last 15 years in the State Assembly. Since the formation of BJP, quite three decades ago, the party had hardly won any seat in the Assembly. During the entire tenure of the Left Front – from 1977 to 2011 – the BJP had failed to enter the Assembly, barring once in 1999 when it bagged a seat, jointly with the AITC. In fact, on Tuesday, for the first time, BJP won a seat without an alliance partner in Bengal Assembly.
However, BJP had relatively better performance in Lok Sabha election over decades. In last Lok Sabha election Delhi based BJP leader S S Ahluwalia and singer Babul Supriyo were elected from north and south Bengal respectively. But the nationalist party had nothing to write home about in the Assembly elections, after the left consolidation.
Between 1951 and 1971, when Left Front was reasonably weak in the State and Congress was in command, the predecessors of the BJP – All India Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) and Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Maha Sabha (HMS) – had won seats periodically. In fact in 1951, buoyed by the spirit of nationalism soon after the Independence, BJS bagged nine seats in the State Assembly, while HMS had won four. The nationalist parties had won seats in 1967 and ’71 as well. But with the rise of the Communists from late 60s, both BJS and HMS lost base in their traditional pockets. The other reason could be the merger of the nationalist parties with Janata Party in 1977.
So, in a way, left’s near demise in Bengal is more worrying for the ruling party than the rise of the BJP. One’s rise is somewhat connected to the other’s non-performance, while AITC supremo, Mamata Banerjee, with all her crowd pulling abilities, is failing to stop the BJP. Perhaps she could anticipate today’s result and thus invited the Left Front leaders for a cuppa, only a few months back, to convince the Marxists about the ‘significance’ of Left Front in Bengal. Surely today’s results would make her more unhappy.
However, the only data that may encourage leaders and the cadres of the AITC is a substantial drop in BJP’s margin in Basirhat. In the last Lok Sabha election, BJP had a lead of over 25,000 in the Basirhat Dakshin Assembly segment, while today the party candidate Sameek Bhattacharya has won by little over 1700 votes. Whether that is a signal encouraging enough would be known when Ms Banerjee announces her analysis in some public platform.