BJP deluded if it believes it is ready to dislodge Mamata Banerjee

For the past several years, West Bengal has been the BJP's wet dream. It almost appears like an addiction or obsession for the party, which has projected the eastern state as a serial potboiler of disorder, chaos and violence to keep itself going.

Its success in crafting a negative narrative of bloody confrontations, murderous conflicts, abuse, exploitation and crimes against women, rampant corruption and a chief minister who reigns over the turmoil has transformed the state into a dangerous place in the national imagination. Media coverage and editorial comments reflect this imagination amply.

The BJP can pat itself on the back for stirring up the nation’s conscience, so much so that President Draupadi Murmu, who has rarely reacted to other incidents of violence against women, did so to the horrific alleged rape and murder of 'Abhaya', the young trainee doctor at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital.

Declaring “enough is enough”, the President called for an end to such perverse crimes after a series of similar crimes against women and girls in recent weeks. This is puzzling nevertheless, given her self-imposed silence on the brutal violence against women in Manipur in the midst of the ongoing Kuki-Meitei conflict, despite appeals by women’s organisations across the country.

By showcasing West Bengal as the epitome of misrule by an opposition party and linking the Trinamool Congress to its tirade against the Congress-led INDIA bloc, BJP seems to believe that it can regain the political ground it lost in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The problem is the party has to prove to the people that it is the alternative to the TMC in West Bengal. Its patchy electoral record in the state since 2019 in panchayat elections, the Assembly election of 2021 and in this year’s general elections, and its rejection by the people did nothing to further the ambition.

If BJP leaders write letters to the home ministry complaining about lawlessness and disorder under Mamata Banerjee and even when this charge is backed up by governor C.V. Ananda Bose’s own assessment that violence erupted this week when the police cracked down on a dubious students' organisation which called for a march to the state government secretariat at Nabanna, that still does not cut much ice. The BJP has to be far more specific about what it wants home minister Amit Shah and his boss Prime Minister Narendra Modi to do.

The BJP dare not openly call for the imposition of President’s Rule under Article 356 in West Bengal because that would trigger a reaction across the country that it knows it cannot control. One reason is Manipur; for 16 months violence against the Kukis has turned into an ethnic cleansing of the valley, while the BJP and the home ministry have been silent spectators. The failure of the Biren Singh government to restore order and rehabilitate the displaced living in camps away from Meitei dominated areas is where the urgent calls for doing something is most needed.

Calling for intervention in West Bengal would be politically almost certainly disastrous for the BJP. Such speculation in the media has turned the conversation among politically conscious Bengalis — both bhadralok and the relatively poorer working class — into a criticism of the local BJP as weak, divisive, disorganised and detached from ground realities. In popular perception, the BJP in West Bengal is not rooted; it is controlled by its central leadership.

To unseat Mamata Banerjee, the BJP has to find a 'face'. In the very personalised politics that is as characteristic of Modi as it is of Mamata Banerjee, a convincing challenger has to be more than a symbol or a proxy.

The problems of the state BJP stem from the fact that it has three leaders and not one. There is state president Sukanta Majumdar, whose term has ended but a replacement has not yet been found. There is the leader of the opposition in the state Assembly Suvendu Adhikari, who leads the 'navya' or new leaders of defectors and then there is Dilip Ghosh, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader, who is a mobiliser and a force to be reckoned with in the party.

The difference with the TMC is stark. Whereas Mamata Banerjee is a mass leader with a track record of rising through the ranks starting with student politics, which she reminded the party’s Chhatra Parishad audience at a meeting in Kolkata on Wednesday which coincided with the flop BJP bandh, the challenger has no one that comes close to her in terms of experience and image.

Make no mistake. Anti-incumbency is a problem for Mamata Banerjee. So is it a problem for Modi. The difference is that the TMC has improved its seat tally in the state Assembly every election, since 2011. It has recovered ground since the dip in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. That cannot be said for Modi 3.0, which is a minority government dependent on allies in the Lok Sabha.

Until the BJP realises that leaders grow through participation in local movements over local causes, it will continue to be at a disadvantage. Ousting Mamata Banerjee from power is a political agenda; it is not the same as a local issue as was the historic confrontation over raising tram fares by one paisa in the 1950s or the trade union movements or even the Tebhaga Andolan.

In contrast, hijacking the spontaneous public meetings demanding justice for the R.G. Kar Medical College victim, as the BJP has done through its Nabanna Abhijan, followed by a Bengal bandh the next day and by a call for central intervention, are low-cost investments in the hope of windfall gains. It is unlikely to succeed with voters, regardless of how captivated its national audience may be.