The byelections for four seats in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly have dealt a big blow to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as it chases its goal of breaking into the Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) bastion. The TMC won all the seats.
Ordinarily, the results would not be considered a serious setback, given the conventional wisdom that assembly byelections favour the party in power. The problem is that this homespun wisdom doesn’t account for nuances.
First, it should be noted that the BJP had won three of the four constituencies going to the polls in the viscerally contested 2021 assembly elections. These were Raiganj, part of the eponymous Lok Sabha constituency; Bagdah, part of the Bongaon constituency; and Ranaghat Dakshin part of the Ranaghat constituency. Only Maniktala had gone the TMC’s way in 2021. The loss of three seats can hardly be explained away by a putative incumbency factor.
The margins are also pretty big, which should dissuade the BJP from taking comfort from generic nostrums. In Raiganj, the TMC’s Krishna Kalyani won his seat by a margin of over 56,000 votes. He had won the same seat on a BJP ticket by around 20,000 votes in 2021, before defecting to the TMC, resigning from his seat and contesting the Raiganj parliamentary seat in the general election earlier this year. He lost to the BJP’s Kartik Pal by around 68,000 votes.
In Bagdah, the youngest candidate in the fray, the TMC’s Madhuparna Thakur, won the contest by over 33,000 votes. In 2021, the BJP’s Biswajit Das won the seat by around 10,000 votes. In the general elections earlier this year, MoS Shantanu Thakur took the Bongaon seat by close to 75,000 votes.
In Ranaghat Dakshin, the TMC’s Mukutmani Adhikari won the election by over 39,000 votes. He had won the seat on a BJP ticket in 2021 by approximately 17,000 votes, before defecting to the TMC, resigning his membership of the assembly and contesting the Lok Sabha elections from the Ranaghat constituency, which he lost to the BJP candidate by over 180,000 votes.
In Maniktala, Supti Pandey defeated her BJP adversary, Kalyan Chaubey, by over 62,000 votes. Her husband, Sadhan Pandey, had won the seat in 2021 by around 20,000 votes. Though the TMC’s Sudip Bandyopadhyay had won the Kolkata Uttar seat in the general elections by over 90,000 votes, the margin had been whittled down considerably in the Maniktala assembly segment.
What jumps out are the huge swings in the BJP-held constituencies — 70,000-odd in Raiganj; 40,000-plus in Bagdah; and, 55,000-odd in Ranaghat Dakshin. In between, the BJP had registered comfortable wins in the general elections. In Maniktala, the TMC’s margin trebled, bookending a poor show in the general elections.
What should be of special concern to the BJP is the fact that all the three seats ceded lie in areas it considers its stomping grounds. Raiganj is in North Bengal, which has been under the BJP’s sway since the 2019 general elections and, more importantly, Bagdah and Ranaghat Dakshin are in the heart of Matua territory.
The BJP has spared no effort to keep the Matua community’s vote intact, especially through the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019. A crack in this fortress will augur badly for the BJP because Matua votes influence election results in over 30 assembly seats. A fracture of the vote in North Bengal would also be bad news, given that the BJP won 25 out of 42 assembly seats in the region in 2021.
Looking ahead, however, these results could have a seriously demoralising effect on an already stricken party. BJP leaders might bravely argue that between 2019 and 2024, the party has lost less than 2% of the vote and has retained its vote share from the 2021 assembly elections, but numerical callisthenics aren’t hiding the disarray in the West Bengal BJP.
Factionalism is rife, especially between the old guard, symbolised by former West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh, and the “turncoat” brigade, symbolised by Suvendu Adhikari. The empowerment of the latter, oldies say, cost the BJP seats.
And to wrap it up, there’s a leadership crisis the central leaders don’t seem to be in a hurry to resolve. The current BJP president, Sukanta Majumdar, will have to go after getting a ministerial berth. The talent on offer to replace him is not shining through brightly. And Ghosh has said he’ll leave the party if he’s given no responsibilities. So, it’s over to Delhi.
Suhit K Sen is an author and political commentator based in Kolkata.The views expressed are personal
