After playing hardball, Bengal BJP now prays for a lifeline

Internal squabbling, Matua backlash over non-fulfilment of CAA promise and loss of interest of central leaders have pushed the BJP in West Bengal to political insignificance less than a year after it made a dogged attempt to capture power in the state.

The humiliating drubbing in the recently concluded local body elections that saw BJP’s vote shares slip to the third position, behind the ruling TMC and the Left Front, has triggered a fresh round of internal strife within the party.

In the closed-door meeting convened to chart the party’s revival strategy on Saturday (March 5), many leaders including Hooghly MP Locket Chatterjee reportedly expressed virtual “no confidence” on the party’s current state leadership under the presidentship of Sukanta Majumdar.

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“Blaming Trinamool Congress-perpetrated violence for the party’s electoral debacle will not serve the purpose,” a BJP leader quoted Chatterjee as saying in the meeting.

The rift in the party over the poll outcome was clear even before the review meeting started when a Twitter handle ostensibly run by dissident BJP leaders slammed the party leadership.

“Today Amit Malviya, Amitava Chakraborty, Suvendu Adhikari, Arjun Singh, Sukanta Majumdar, Agnimitra Paul gangs of failure will teach the key of success (to) those Bengal BJP leader (who) won 18 Lok Sabha seats without them,” read a tweet from the handle Save Bengal BJP.

Leader of the opposition and BJP Nandigram MLA Suvendu Adhikari, however, was conspicuous by his absence in the meeting.

Sliding below Left

The BJP camp has reason to be rattled. TMC won 102 of the 108 municipalities that went to the poll last month. Four civic bodies remained hung, while the CPI (M) and the nascent Hamro Party won one municipality each.

In the assembly elections held last year, the BJP had emerged as the main opposition party in the state bagging 77 seats with a 37.97% voteshare. The Left parties for the first time since independence could not win a single seat in the Bengal assembly and its vote share dropped to little over 5 per cent.

Within less than a year, the BJP has been pipped for the second place by the CPI(M)-led Left Front in vote share. While the Left Front got 14.2%, BJP had to settle with 12.6% whereas the TMC garnered a massive 63.5% of the votes.

The BJP’s slide vis-a-vis the LF came to the fore last year when the party’s vote share in the Kolkata corporation elections dropped below that of the LF.  The LF secured 11.87% votes as against the BJP’s 9.19%. It was the first time since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, that the BJP slipped to third position in terms of vote share.

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In the subsequent four corporation elections, the Left came second in two, while the BJP retained its second place in two others.

Factionalism, failing to keep 2019 poll promises and lack of interest of the party central leadership in the state unit’s affairs are cited as some of the reasons for the party’s sagging electoral fortunes.

Ahead of the 2019 parliamentary elections, the party had wooed the electorally significant Matua community with the promise to implement the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).  The promise has not yet been fulfilled, much to the dismay of the party’s Matua leadership, who have now either sulked or rebelled.

“The party’s central leadership has remained indifferent to the woes of the state unit. They (central leaders) are not taking any initiative to fulfil the promises made during Lok Sabha elections or to resolve the differences within the state leaders,” said president of a district unit of the party.

He further pointed out that the central leaders did not take any interest in the state’s civic body polls though usually the BJP central leaders rigorously campaign even in the municipal polls, taking every election very seriously.