Sir,
The massive victory of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress in the panchayat polls in West Bengal has sent signals to all the national political parties – the BJP, the Congress and the CPI(M) – about its consequences on the politics of the state, as also the impact on the Lok Sabha elections scheduled in March-April 2024.
For the BJP, which has 18 seats in the present Lok Sabha out of the total of 42 seats in West Bengal, the rural poll results are devastating from the standpoint of the coming Lok Sabha polls. The party has lost its strongholds in North Bengal, the five districts of Junglemahal, as also Matua-dominated Bongaon and Ranaghat areas which returned most of its candidates in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, and many of which elected the BJP candidates even in the 2021 assembly polls.
As regards the CPI(M) and the Congress, there is some improvement in their vote share. In 2023 rural polls, the Left Front, mainly the CPI(M), got 13.69 per cent votes and the Congress got 6.42 per cent. So together, the Left-Congress combine got 20.11 per cent.
This was much better compared to the vote share figure of the CPI(M) at 4.71per cent and the Congress at 3.03 per cent in the 2021 assembly polls. That way, the CPI(M) vote share increased by 8 per cent.
But the paradox is that more the CPI(M) or the Congress gains in marginal areas, that helps the Trinamool Congress candidates to win, because the main opposition candidate is BJP and that is the share of anti-Trinamool votes. For the CPI(M), the comfort is that the party supporters votes which went to the BJP in 2019 Lok Sabha polls, have started to come back, but more it comes, the more it helps TMC as against the BJP.
Satyaki Chakraborty
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