There appears to be one particular-way targeted traffic in West Bengal politics, towards the BJP. The ruling Trinamool Congress could be in denial but it can not want away the significant challenge the saffron celebration is mounting to dislodge it from energy in subsequent year’s Assembly poll. Ten years ago, Mamata Banerjee had the momentum behind her when to everyone’s surprise she managed to oust the Left Front from the Writers’ Building immediately after it had ruled the state with out a break for 3 decades.
Mercurial Mamata appears to have frittered away significantly of the goodwill, thanks to her inability to trust any individual with duty in the celebration organisation other than her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, MP. Along with the mercenary election strategist Prashant Kishor, Abhishek has alienated a quantity of senior leaders of the celebration. One of the seniormost who parted organization with Mamata, Suvendu Adhikari, a essential minister who helped her turn the tide against the Marxists, spearheading protests in Nandigram and Singur, quit a couple of days ago.
Adhikari has now walked away with a quantity of TMC MLAs and at least one particular MP from the TMC. At a large rally in Medinapur on Saturday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah welcomed Adhikari and a host of other senior TMC leaders into the BJP. Shah made use of the occasion to warn the chief minister that her days in energy had been numbered. He pointedly trashed the TMC propaganda that the BJP was an outsider in West Bengal, criticising her for becoming parochial-minded.
The chief campaigner of the BJP told the beleaguered chief minister that the BJP was determined to get in touch with her to account, no matter how she misuses the state machinery to attack and torment the celebration workers. Shah and other BJP leaders have accused the ruling celebration of unleashing a reign of terror against the BJP supporters. A quantity of BJP workers have died in current weeks in attacks allegedly by the ruling celebration supporters.
In truth, a couple of days ago the motorcade of the BJP President J P Nadda was targeted by the ruling celebration supporters in the Lok Sabha constituency of Abhishek Banerjee. This has led to an administrative stand-off involving the Centre and the State. Three IPS officers on deputation to West Bengal, who had been in charge of Nadda’s safety, had been recalled by the Centre regardless of bitter resistance by the state government.
The exodus from the ruling celebration is set to develop additional as the poll approaches, particularly in view of the arbitrary vetting of sitting MLAs by Prashant Kishor’s information crunchers who are unacquainted with the nearby political contexts in person constituencies.
With absolutely nothing constructive to show for her decade in energy, her only hope is the most likely consolidation of the more than 30 per cent Muslim vote behind the TMC, in case the BJP appears like a significant contender for energy. However, this could not be an unalloyed boon for the TMC, considering that it has the possible to trigger a counter-consolidation of the majority against the ruling celebration.
A incredibly fierce, no-holds-barred contest awaits West Bengal. Neither side will leave any stone unturned to vanquish the other, not a pleased augury for a peaceful , orderly poll.