As the hashtag #BengaliPrimeMinister trended on Twitter on May 31, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee seemed to have won two rounds of a battle—first, the assembly polls that showed the BJP on Narendra Modi and Amit Shah’s watch is not invincibile; second, the Centre-state tussle after the election results galvanised the entire Opposition to her side. The Centre sent teams to probe alleged post-poll violence against BJP supporters, and then the CBI arrested those Narada-accused who are not with the BJP. This was followed by a tussle over the Cyclone Yaas review meeting—the unprecedented invitation to leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari prompted Mamata to skip a meeting with the PM. The row escalated over the Centre’s action against the state’s chief secretary, Alapan Bandyopadhyay, one of her trusted bureaucrats. He was asked to report to the Centre, immediately. Even as Bandyopadhyay took retirement rather dramatically to avoid a posting with the Union government, the Centre issued a show-cause notice asking him to explain his absence at the scheduled Modi meeting.
By May 31, as Mamata appeared to have beat the Centre’s moves with regard to the chief secretary by offering him a three-year term as her chief advisor, the arrested TMC leaders also got bail. And BJP leaders in Bengal had mostly gone silent. “The more Modi singles out Mamata, the more she gains national prominence,” says Biswanath Chakraborty, a professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University in Calcutta. “Public perception is going against the Centre. The state is being seen as the victim and gaining sympathy.”
The Bengal BJP’s growing discomfort became evident when Subhranshu Roy—son of Mukul Roy, Mamata’s one-time confidante who is now a BJP national vice president—wrote in a Facebook post that the party should have focussed on introspection instead of heckling the TMC after it was voted back to power with a massive mandate. Subhranshu, a two-time TMC MLA, had contested the assembly election on a BJP ticket and lost. Roy Senior has been maintaining complete silence since the polls. Other turncoats, including former MLAs Sonali Guha, Dipendu Biswas and Bachchu Hasda, have publicly apologised for betraying the TMC and made overtures to return to Mamata’s party.
“The Centre took an aggressive stand against the state to protect our house in Bengal, so that leaders do not start deserting us for the TMC. However, the policy seems to have backfired so far,” says a BJP Lok Sabha MP from Bengal. A BJP state unit member who did not want to be identified says the party is yet to ask them for an analysis of the election debacle, perhaps because the blame would mostly be on the central leaders.
“They literally took over the state unit and took all calls regarding the elections. They would have claimed credit in case of success, but are not ready to take responsibility of the defeat,” adds the state leader.
A BJP MLA says the party “clearly appears to have lost the plot in Bengal”. “The central leadership made a call to turn Bengal into Sonar Bangla—or Golden Bengal—but the people did not trust us with that. Now the party seems confused about the new policy,” the legislator adds.
Another MLA feels there are indications that the party’s future plan involves intensification of campaigns on communal lines. “Muslims have overwhelmingly rejected our party and there is absolutely no hope for us to get Muslim votes in the foreseeable future. Therefore, the top leadership of the party and the RSS would depend more on the prospect of Hindu consolidation,” the MLA says. Meanwhile, the Centre’s moves targeting the state administration have complicated matters all the more.
By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya in Calcutta
