#dnaEdit: Didi marches on

In its sweeping victory in the recent municipal polls, West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), has proved a significant political point: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee  is under no imminent threat from her adversaries in the Left and the Right. The TMC has scored a thumping victory over the opposition by winning 70 of the 91 civic bodies that went to polls across West Bengal, and bagged a record 114 of the 144 wards in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. In contrast, the Opposition has failed to win even a single borough in Calcutta. 

In the aftermath of her party’s electoral triumph, Banerjee has admitted that the results have indeed exceeded her expectations. She has reason to smile. This happened to be TMC’s first sweeping victory since Banerjee sidelined her party’s election strategist, Mukul Roy, and put together a new team. At a broader political level, the Chief Minister has been engaged in warding off strikes by an aggressive Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since it ascended to power at the Centre last year. In addition, the Saradha scam as it unravelled, scalped the TMC leadership.  

Banerjee needed this electoral feat to prove her continued invincibility in West Bengal. And so she has. The TMC has crushed the BJP which hoped to showcase the municipal poll results as a stepping stone to the 2016 assembly polls. But the party’s dismal performance — the BJP has failed to touch a double digit in Kolkata and come up with nought in West Bengal’s 91 municipalities — shows the party still has a long way to go in building an organisation on the ground. Without a robust organisational network and strong local leadership, the BJP will find it increasingly difficult to get into the competitive electoral game.  

As of now, the municipal poll results should be a cause of concern for the BJP. The outcome shows a slide in the party’s popularity since the 2014 elections when the BJP was in the number one position in 26 of Kolkata’s municipal wards.  The party, since, has clearly failed to put together a cohesive organisation, besides facing charges of corruption in candidates, and grappling with rampant inner-party factionalism. The communal card which delivered rich dividends in Uttar Pradesh hasn’t — so far — worked in West Bengal. Neither has the party alchemist Amit Shah’s strategy. The BJP leadership seemed too optimistic in hoping the Modi factor would sway middle-class voters. 

The Left parties — though a distant second to the TMC in the municipal elections — managed to elevate themselves as the main opposition — the position they had to  yield to BJP in the Lok Sabha polls. Wherever the Left had collectively put its weight behind a strong leader — for instance CPIM’s Ashok Bhattacharya in Siliguri and Forward Bloc’s Udayan Guha in Coochbehar — it was able to trump the BJP.

But this is cold comfort in the face of TMC’s massive sweep. More worrying is the opposition’s mindless response to the results. Both CPM and the BJP issued a bandh call yesterday to protest the TMC’s poll terror tactics thereby indicating their inability or unwillingness to put up a political fight. People in West Bengal are fed up of bandhs. The opposition is not likely to notch up their diminished popularity by re-deploying such worn-out tactics often bordering on outright coercion. Besides, neither rigging nor terror, can explain the TMC’s massive mandate. This is not to deny the TMC’s role in ratcheting up political violence in the state, and its appropriation of the networks of terror left behind by the CPIM. Bannerjee, without further delay, needs to weed out the entrenched culture of political violence in West Bengal. This will add weight to her electoral victory and lend credibility to her party and government.