Here Are The 10 Factors That Tripped The BJP In Bengal

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had set a target of winning 35 of the 42 seats in Bengal for itself, could ultimately achieve just a little over a third of its target. 

What was also deeply embarrassing for the BJP was that it could not even hold on its 2019 tally of 18 seats. The saffron party’s vote share also fell from 40.25 per cent five years ago to 38.73 per cent this time. 

For a party that had very vociferously proclaimed its intent to unseat the Trinamool Congress from power in the state, Tuesday’s electoral outcome would have been devastating and dealt a deadly blow to its morale. 

Not only could it not read the minds of the people of Bengal, its attempts to polarise voters on religious lines backfired and its organisational handicaps, as well as internecine conflicts among its top ranks in the state, prevented it from inspiring confidence among voters. 

Here is a summary of the key factors that made the BJP fall flat in Bengal:

1. Failure To Counter Trinamool’s Narratives: The BJP failed spectacularly to counter Mamata Banerjee’s charges about denial of funds to Bengal by the Union government. 

Banerjee had been building this narrative over the past three years, and all that the Union government needed to do was bring out a comprehensive white paper on the many scams in centrally-sponsored projects like PMAY, PMGSY and MGNREGA in Bengal. 

The Union government could have explained that these scams, and the Trinamool government’s steadfast refusal to take action against those who committed financial irregularities, was the reason why disbursal of funds for these schemes had been stopped. 

Banerjee also built public opinion against the BJP by blaming it for the Calcutta High Court order cancelling jobs of 26,000 school teachers for irregularities in their recruitment. The BJP failed to counter that when it would have been easy to do so. 

The BJP could not even effectively highlight the deep-rooted corruption and the many scams within the Trinamool Congress.

This was mostly because the state unit does not have people who can craft a quick counter-narrative to match the Trinamool’s misinformation. 

2. Over-Dependence On Modi-Amit Shah: The BJP in Bengal is over-dependent on Modi-Amit Shah, and also completely dominated by its central leaders. 

The party is yet to throw up a credible face, except Suvendu Adhikari, in Bengal. This over-dependence on Modi and Shah, and the state unit’s domination by ‘outsiders’, doesn’t go down well with Bengal’s electorate. 

Apart from Adhikari, there is no leader in the state party unit who can muster a decent crowd at a street-corner meeting. Most BJP leaders in the state lack an organic ground connection and hold on to their irrelevant posts by flattering central leaders. 

Depending on Modi to get votes in Bengal clearly didn’t work. It didn’t work in 2021 also, but the state leaders learnt no lessons from that setback in the assembly elections.

3. Non-Performing MPs: Save for Raju Bista in Darjeeling and, to some extent, Dilip Ghosh in Midnapore, none of the other 16 BJP Lok Sabha MPs from Bengal did much work for their constituencies. 

They were perceived as non-performing and ineffective MPs. 

What also put the BJP’s Bengal team in the Lok Sabha at a severe disadvantage was the central leadership’s refusal/failure to give them any worthwhile responsibilities in the Union government. A handful of them were made only junior ministers without any powers. This was taken as a slight to Bengal by the people of the state. 

4. Sandeshkhali Didn’t Work: The BJP built a momentum with Sandeshkhali and made the issue of women’s safety and land grab by Trinamool functionaries a major issue, but it ran out of steam when the Trinamool released videos of a sting operation that purportedly showed some junior BJP functionaries admitting that women of Sandeshkhali were bribed to level false allegations of sexual assault. 

The sting videos allowed the Trinamool to craft a quick narrative that the BJP was defaming Bengal by using womenfolk to level false allegations. The BJP could not counter that, and took a beating. 

5. Flawed Candidate Selection: While the Trinamool released its list of candidates for all 42 seats in the state in one go, the BJP dithered and released only partial lists. This conveyed the impression that the BJP’s central leadership could not make up its mind about candidates in Bengal. 

To make matters worse, the selection of candidates in some seats was poor. Tainted persons were given party tickets. 

Also, some incumbent MPs were shifted from their seats unnecessarily and inexplicably. For instance, Dilip Ghosh who won Medinipur by a margin of nearly 89,000 votes in 2019 was fielded from Burdwan-Durgapur, whose incumbent MP, Surendrajeet Singh Ahulwalia, was fielded from Asansol. Fashion designer Agnimitra Paul was fielded from Medinipur, an uncharted territory for her. All three of them lost very badly to their Trinamool Congress rivals. 

6. BJP Lost Support Of Tribals: The tribals of ‘Jangalmahal’ who had supported the BJP in 2019 were wooed actively by Mamata Banerjee over the last five years with development schemes and many sops. 

The BJP failed to retain their support and reach out to them. State BJP leaders failed to tell the tribals about the various measures that had been taken for their welfare by the Modi government, and also convey the BJP’s concern and respect for tribals at the national level to them.

The BJP won five of the six ‘Jangalmahal’ seats — Purulia, Bankura, Bishnupur, Jhargram and Medinipur — in 2019. Only Ghatal was won by Trinamool’s Deepak Adhikari. 

But this time, the Trinamool snatched back three seats — Bankura, Jhargram and Medinipur — from the BJP, which won only the Purulia and Bishnupur seats. 

There has also been a substantial erosion in support from tribals in North Bengal (who work in tea gardens) for the BJP. Though the BJP won the Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar seats that have a substantial tribal presence, the victory margins came down due to erosion of tribal support. 

7. Anti-Muslim Rhetoric Boomeranged: The BJP upped its anti-Muslim rhetoric from the second phase of polling. Taking a cue from Modi, BJP campaigners started accusing Mamata Banerjee very harshly of Muslim appeasement. 

Amit Shah repeatedly said that the Trinamool’s politics was all about “mullah, maulvi, madrassa and mafia”. 

This resulted in a consolidation of Muslim votes behind the Trinamool Congress. But there was no consolidation of Hindu votes behind the BJP, and the BJP suffered. 

The anti-Muslim rhetoric also put off a large number of urban middle-class Hindus and affected the image of the party. 

8. CAA did not work: The Union government enacted the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) just before the announcement of elections with an eye on the Matua vote. However, there was a lot of confusion over rules and procedures that would have to be followed, and documents that would have to be submitted by applicants for Indian citizenship. 

The Trinamool was quick to take advantage of this confusion and very cleverly sowed seeds of doubt among the Matuas by stating that all those who applied would be treated as illegal immigrants and would be sent to detention camps as in Assam. 

The BJP failed to counter such misinformation quickly and that cost it the support of Mauta votes in some constituencies like Barasat and Krishnanagar.

9. Women Voters Remained With Mamata Banerjee: Women remained firmly with Mamata Banerjee because of the welfare measures and doles to women and girls. Her ‘Lakshmir Bhandar’, ‘Kanyashree’, ‘Rupashree’ and similar schemes have given her a loyal constituency of women voters who have stood steadfastly by her. 

The BJP could have also announced welfare measures and doles for women, like it did in Odisha, to garner the support of women and entice them away from Mamata Banerjee. But, inexplicably, it failed to do so. 

Support of women resulted in the Trinamool reclaiming the Coochbehar, Behrampur, Murshidabad, Medinipur and Hooghly seats and also drove the Trinamool’s wins by big margins in Krishnanagar, Mathurapur, Kolkata North, Uluberia, Arambagh, Jangipur, Ghatal, Bolpur, Birbhum and Bardhaman. 

10 Hard Hindutva And Modi-Centric Campaigns Failed: The one-size-fits-all approach of the BJP in its campaign proved disastrous in Bengal. 

Hard Hindutva — the building of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, etc — did not resonate with the voters in Bengal. 

What also did not work was the highly Modi-centric campaign, the overdose of ‘Modi ki guarantee’ and the deification of Modi, as can be gauged from the strong criticism and lampooning of Modi in social media in Bengal.  

The Trinamool had a field day tapping into voters’ unease with this and that resulted in a surge in support for the party. 

The BJP, thus, has only itself to blame for not only falling far short of its target of winning 35 seats in Bengal, but also failing to retain the 18 seats it won five years ago.