BJP President Amit Shah virtually threw down the gauntlet to West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on Sunday. He said that the BJP would try its best to come to power in Bengal come 2016 elections. BJP President said that his mission will be to uproot TMC from the state. For achieving that goal, Amit Shah specifically mentioned the Kolkata Municipality Election as the starting point to 'paribartan'.
While no one can doubt the organisational prowress of Amit Shah specially after his coup in Uttar Pradesh in the last Lok Sabha elections, here are five reasons why Amit Shah may find the going a bit difficult in West Bengal.
Organisation weakness of BJP:
This is one major chink in BJP's armour at this point of time. While in UP, there was a BJP organisation albeit ramshackle which was bolstered by Amit Shah and Narendra Modi, in many places of Bengal the saffron unit still does not have ground level presence. In the last Lok Sabha elections, even though there was groundswell of support for BJP in different parts of Bengal, owing to lack of cadre strength the support could not get converted into votes.
Lack of a strong local face:
Tapan Shikdar and Tathagata Roy used to be two of the tallest leader of BJP in the state during the reign of AB Vajpayee as PM. Currently the state president Rahul Sinha and singer turned MP Babul Supriyo are the two most visible faces of the saffron unit. But none of them can match the hysterical popularity Mamata Banerjee enjoyed when she was the opposition leader or even now as the CM. BJP is trying to fill that gap with Siddharth Narayan Singh taking on the TMC government. Amit Shah is set to focus hard on Bengal for the upcoming elections. But the language barrier will continue to be a major impediment for the BJP President especially given that Mamata Banerjee will harp on the slogan of 'maa-mati-manush' and is likely to play the emotional card of 'conspiracy against Bengal'.
Caste and religion not a decisive factor:
Unlike many states, the polity of Bengal is considerably less fragmented along caste or religious lines. Thus any kind of social engineering is difficult to implement in a short time. It can only happen in an organic way like it took place when a large section of the society lent their voice against the land acquisition policy of the Left government back in 2008-2011. So there is unlikely to be any quick-fix method for BJP to counter their organisational weakness. They have to grind it out the hard way like Mamata Banerjee did for 13 years before finally getting to power.
Rural vote-bank of TMC is still intact:
The urban vote bank of TMC has suffered a blow thanks to the incessant bad press, relating to several issues like the Saradha scam, Burdwan blast, Jadavpur incident and host of other issues. Mamata Banerjee has largely come across as a person with very little patience and respect for any contrarian voice. Hence BJP can rightfully hope that they can make a considerable dent in TMC's urban vote-bank which was extremely loyal to Mamata Banerjee not long ago. But the same is not true with the rural vote bank. Many believe the state government has done a decent job for its rural electorate. Some schemes like Kanyashree have found resonance with the masses. The heady days of Maoist insurgency in Junglemahal is also a matter of the past now. Bengal has made considerable strides in implementing the MGNREGA scheme too. So it will take a Herculean effort from BJP leaders and cadres to erode the solid vote bank TMC enjoys in rural Bengal in the foreseeable future.
BJP has too much catching up to do:
The party has undoubtedly gained ground in a massive way in West Bengal but still it's vote share is around 17%. TMC sits comfortably ahead with 39% and the Left are also no pushovers, in spite of the shocks of the previous few elections. For BJP to even emerge as a principal opposition party, it needs to completely erode the Left vote bank which will be an ardous task in itself. The Left is currently trying to reinvent themselves by pushing young faces like Ritabrata Banerjee. A turf war between the Left and the BJP in the coming days is possible.
In the final analysis, it does looks like BJP's road to Writers Building in Kolkata will not be easy. However stranger things have happened in politics and going by BJP's coup in states like Haryana where it had very little organisation, a possible saffron emergence in Bengal cannot be ruled out. For now though, Mamata Banerjee seems to be sitting pretty. Her crown may be uneasy but not at risk of falling off.
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