Bengal elections and after.

Soon after the election was over in Bengal, which chose to go with a status quo and Mamata, BJP is taking time to come to its senses about the reality of gracefully admitting its defeat. From a confident 200 seats plus expectation, the BJP had to contend with 77 seats, but that is +74 seats than the last Assembly elections. BJP has won 18 of the 42 Parliamentary seats in 2019. Going by that proportion, the BJP ought to have won 126 seats, each Parliamentary seat being equivalent to 7 Assembly seats.

Inability to gel with locals, an arrogant leadership, ignoring old loyalists and filling the party with deserters did the party in. Being the ruling party at the Centre, the BJP could pull strings in crafting a long tiring eight phases poll. The complaints of the election commission often tweaking rules to favour the BJP leadership were not entirely unfounded. The state was full of Central forces to control the elections. Despite all these, if Mamata could win, it is her close connection at the grassroots levels.

There could have been post-poll violence, but Bengal had witnessed even violent pre and post-poll violence for decades together. The rigging of polls was engineered to perfection by the left, which the TMC had inherited. However, with Central forces breathing on everyone’s neck, I guess the complaints of electoral malpractices were lesser this time.

The BJP perhaps has not been able to digest the West Bengal defeat and have begun their work as an opposition soon after.  The overzealousness of the BJP is needless and premature if they think any drastic upset will happen to the Mamata government, which may not. A fact-finding committee from Delhi came and recorded the violence after the polls. The victims could get no help from the party as the security, law, and order now were a State subject.

Then is the case of Narada. The local CBI officials cannot lift a finger on the heavyweight accused, all leading faces in the Trinamool without the instructions of the Home Ministry at the Centre. In a juvenile manner, they went to the residences of the ministers in the morning hours, prompting a furious Mamata to visit the homes of a few of her arrested colleagues and sit in dharna at the CBI office, demanding that she be arrested as well. After many scenes in the CBI court and the High Court, the ministers are now out on bail. The method of arrest has furthered the idea of a revengeful Modi and BJP unable to digest their defeat in the elections.

The last slip until this writing is the matter on the Chief Secretary. His extension was approved by the Centre just a few days ago. He missed or walked off from a meeting that the PM had called to review the cyclone. But the CS was with his Chief Minister and perhaps had to heed to her instructions as well. Without opting for a gentle reprimand, the Centre decided to issue a show-cause under the Disaster Management Act, which I consider silly, as the courts will pooh-pooh it.

BJP, West Bengal must grow up to understand the ethos of Bengal, rather than indulging in silly theatrics, if it plans to sustain its members. It must reign in the Governor, who seems to like the post of the Leader of Opposition.

Former TMC MLA Sonali Guha returning to Didi’s embrace after a month’s trial at the BJP may not be an isolated case! I hear many more are planning a return to the TMC.

Sampath Kumar

Intrépide Voix