‘Nijer meye’ wins war, narrowly loses Nandi

KOLKATA: Mamata Banerjee won the most important match of her life as Bengal’s voters reposed their faith in their “nijer meye (own daughter)” and propelled her to office for a third straight term.
The Trinamool comfortably went past the two-thirds mark in the 294-seat assembly, leading in 214 constituencies till late on Sunday evening and bagging an unprecedented 48% of the popular vote.
The victory, however, was rendered somewhat bitter-sweet by a narrow defeat in Nandigram. The Election Commission website declared BJP candidate Suvendu Adhikari the winner by 1,956 votes around 11pm after a cliffhanger of a day.
That was, however, the only spot in a resounding Trinamool victory.
The BJP officially became the state’s main opposition party but finished a distant second, leading in 76 seats and netting 38.1% of the vote.
The 2021 Bengal assembly poll result also confirmed the terminal decline of the Left Front and the Congress; their combined vote share was a little more than 8% and neither led in a single constituency.
This would be the first time the CPM would be drawing a blank since 1967 when it first fought an election in Bengal after its split from the Communist Party of India.
It would also be the first time the Congress would not have a seat in the state assembly.
Their poll partner, the Indian Secular Front, won a seat but its share of the popular vote could not be confirmed. Ultimately, the 2021 assembly poll completed a process of churning within the opposition space but not in Bengal.
The assembly poll result may have repercussions beyond Bengal. Banerjee would be looking to consolidate her gains in Bengal by getting together all anti-BJP forces and may become a rallying point for the opposition for the 2024 LS poll; she indicated as much towards the end of her campaign. Crucially for the BJP, it may miss being in office in a state that sends a substantial chunk of 42 MPS to the LS.
The Trinamool’s 4% increase in vote share from the 2019 Lok Sabha poll (when it got 43.6% of votes) coincided with a 2% dip in the BJP’s share of votes (from its 2019 share of 40.6%).
What would have also boosted the Trinamool was a consolidation of anti-BJP and minority votes in its favour, which would explain the Congress and the LF’s near-decimation (all figures according to EC website at midnight).
Several other factors — largely missed by pundits and buried under the hyperbole of the last few weeks — contributed to the Trinamool victory. The biggest of them would be the silent work done by the party machinery in winning back areas and sections of people that it lost to the BJP in the 2019 LS election.
The reverses suffered by the Trinamool two years ago became a blessing in disguise as it made the party focus on its organisational problems and areas where the BJP made significant gains.
What also played a critical role were the flurry of people-friendly schemes, like Duare Sarkar, Khadya Sathi and Swasthya Sathi, and the schemes targeted at women like Kanyashree; many of the broader schemes also had women as the primary recipients.
The party put its best face forward — a CM in a wheelchair with an injured foot, with the catchy “Bangla nijer mekekei chay (Bengal wants its own daughter)” slogan — as the BJP struggled to get a decent local face to counter her.
The Trinamool, carried by a surge of support from women voters, made strong recoveries in pockets of North 24 Parganas, Hooghly and Howrah. It also held on to its bastions in and around Kolkata as well as those in South 24 Parganas, East Midnapore and East Burdwan, helping it to comfortably lead in more than 200 seats.
The BJP’s attempts at polarising helped it hold on to its positions of strength in some north Bengal districts like Coochbehar, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar.
But its failure to counter Banerjee’s “anti-outsider” slogan — used against the frequent visits of PM Narendra Modi and union home minister Amit Shah — and her portrayal of the BJP as a party overly dependent on “outside support (of leaders from Delhi, UP and Gujarat)” became a severe handicap. Political analysts and BJP leaders admitted on Sunday that they may have misread the “Bengali polarisation” of votes and, instead, focused “only on Hindu-Muslim polarisation”.
Banerjee’s “Khela hobe” slogan from her wheelchair against politicians from Delhi and UP ultimately found greater resonance in Bengal than the BJP’s “crusade” against “Bhaipo tax” and “Trinamool tolabaji (extortion)”. '
The Trinamool’s portrayal of the EC as “Extremely Compromised” and the central agencies’ combined focus on “corruption cases” against its leaders may also have worked against the BJP, whose leaders went on claiming it would “form the next government with 200-plus seats” and said — even after the sixth round of vote — that it had already won enough seats to form the government.
Another factor that went against the BJP, especially in constituencies in and around Kolkata, was the Trinamool’s charge of Covid mismanagement against the Modi government.
It stuck in Kolkata, as the voting percentage dipped in most seats; along with it went the BJP’s hopes of turning any anti-incumbency mood into a strong anti-state government vote.
The BJP might have believed too much in defections and defectors. Adhikari himself may be set for a narrow win but he failed to deliver even his own district, East Midnapore, to his new party; the Trinamool led in at least 10 of the district’s 16 seats.
Former minister and another celebrated defector, Rajib Banerjee, too failed to retain even his own seat as the Trinamool won all 16 seats in Howrah.
Defector after defector — both big and small — lost, giving credence to the claims of the Trinamool leadership that most of those who defected did so because they knew they had no chance of getting a Trinamool ticket or winning their own seat.