Last-Minute Promise And Solid Support Of Bangladesh-Origin Voters Propelled Trinamool Win In Bengal’s Dhupguri

The Trinamool Congress won the Dhupguri Assembly seat in North Bengal, considered to be a stronghold of the BJP, by a margin of 4,309 votes Friday (8 September). 

The BJP had wrested this seat from the Trinamool in 2021 and two years later, the Trinamool won it back from the saffron party. 

Trinamool candidate Nirmal Chandra Roy polled 46.27 per cent votes while the BJP’s Tapasi Roy polled 44.23 per cent of votes. The Congress-backed CPI(M) candidate, Ishwar Chandra Roy, came a distant third with a 6.52 per cent vote share.

In the 2021 Assembly polls, the BJP’s Bishnu Pada Roy had won this seat with a vote share of 45.64 per cent while the vote share of Trinamool’s Mitali Roy was 43.75 per cent. 

The BJP’s vote share declined by a very small margin of 1.41 per cent this time (as compared to 2021) while the Trinamool’s increased by 2.52 per cent. 

Dhupguri Assembly constituency, which falls in Jalpaiguri district, is reserved for Scheduled Castes community. The indigenous Rajbongshis (who fall in the SC category) constitute nearly 60 per cent of the population of this constituency.

The Gorkhas and tea tribes--tribals brought by the British to work as labourers in tea plantations--from another 18 per cent of the population. 

Muslims--mostly migrants from Bangladesh--form about 8-10 percent of the electorate of Dhupguri while Bengali Hindus constitute the remaining 14 per cent of the population.

A close analysis of the results declared late Friday afternoon reveals that the BJP did well in the tea garden and surrounding areas populated by tea tribes and Gorkhas. 

The BJP also performed better than the Trinamool in Dhupguri town, though its margin in this urban pocket--populated mostly by Rajbongshis and Bengali Hindus-- came down from 5,400 (in 2021) to 800 this time. 

Promise of sub-division

That is because of the last-minute promise made by Trinamool general secretary Abhishek Banerjee to upgrade Dhupguri into a sub-division from its present status of a community development block. 

Banerjee made this promise during a campaign rally last weekend. That, conceded even BJP leaders, turned the tables in favour of the Trinamool in the urban pocket. 

“Many who live in Dhupguri town got carried away by this promise. They thought that they will get jobs, contracts and many other benefits once Dhupguri becomes a sub-division,” said BJP leader Shaktipada Barman. 

Trinamool leaders told Swarajya that the promise made the difference between victory and defeat. “The BJP had the upper hand till our party leader made this promise,” said a senior district leader of the Trinamool Congress. 

People of Dhupguri have been demanding this upgradation for a long time, but the Trinamool had not responded to their repeated pleas and representations. 

It was only after local Trinamool leaders conveyed to their party’s top leadership that it would be difficult to win Dhupguri if something major was not announced that the latter decided to act. 

The Muslim factor

A close analysis of the results also reveal that while the Trinamool got 4,600 more votes from Dhupguri town this time as compared to 2021, what really drove the party’s victory was the solid support of the Muslim electorate that voted en masse for the Trinamool. 

The BJP established an early lead in the first three rounds of counting, but the Trinamool started catching up from the fourth round when votes cast in the semi-urban areas started getting counted. 

By the fifth and sixth rounds (of the total ten rounds of counting), the Trinamool had established a clear and unassailable lead. 

In these (5th and 6th) rounds, the votes of the Muslim-dominated rural areas of Barogharia and other places close to the India-Bangladesh border were counted and the Trinamool secured a very strong lead in those rounds to ultimately win Dhupguri. 

By the end of the 6th round, the Trinamool had established a lead of 3,773 votes. But that lead decreased to 2,931 in the seventh round when the counting of votes in Hindu majority areas resumed. 

But the lead given to the Trinamool by the voters of the minority community, and the party’s improved performance in Dhupguri town, drove Nirmal Chandra Roy, a teacher of history in Dhupguri Girls’ College, to victory. 

All the voters from the minority community are allegedly illegal immigrants, or first and second generation descendants of illegal immigrants, from Bangladesh. 

They are a solid vote bank of the Trinamool because of the patronage they receive from the party. The local Trinamool leadership not only ensures that the illegal immigrants are not harassed, it also facilitates the easy procurement of Indian citizenship documents like ration cards, Aadhar cards and voter identity cards for illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. 

In return, the immigrants vote en bloc for the Trinamool. They used to do the same for the communists when the Left Front was in power in Bengal for pretty much the same reasons then. 

The BJP has tried hard to retain the seat by keeping up its overtures to the Rajbongshis. The saffron party had recently nominated prominent community leader Ananta Roy ‘Maharaj’ to the Rajya Sabha in July this year.

Ananta ‘Maharaj’, as he is popularly known, commands tremendous support and respect within his community and has been demanding the formation of a separate Kamtapur state. 

The Union Government had also awarded the Padma Shri to widely-respected educationist Dharma Narayan Barman who has been fighting for recognition for the Rajbongshi language for many decades

The BJP’s choice of candidate--it had fielded the widow of a CRPF trooper slain in the suicide attack at Pulwama in 2019--was considered to be a masterstroke. 

But all that could not ultimately propel the party to victory, thanks to Abhishek Banerjee’s last-minute promise and the Bangladesh-origin Muslims who voted almost en masse for the Trinamool. 

The BJP, however, also has itself to blame for the defeat. Despite winning all the Lok Sabha seats in North Bengal in 2019 and a large majority of Assembly seats in 2021, it has failed to strengthen its organisational base in the region.

The BJP is also beset by infighting and dissensions, and all this has cast a negative impression on the electorate.