Mamata Banerjee’s gambit to ditch INDIA in West Bengal, ‘go ekla’ splits votes in her favour

■ Dec 1984 : A young greenhorn Congress worker from Kalighat — wearing a sari and hawai chappals — has just done the unbelievable, defeating CPM veteran Somnath Chatterjee from Jadavpur, the reddest of red citadels. Mamata Banerjee herself seems surprised and pundits attribute her victory to the sympathy wave that Congress benefited from after Indira Gandhi’s assassination
■ May 2024: Mamata Banerjee is canvassing for votes at Jadavpur’s Baro Bhooter Math (translated as the “ground belonging to a dozen ghosts”).She can work up the crowd to her will and asks for this seat once more so that she can help INDIA bloc in Lok Sabha, never mind that the alliance is not on in Bengal
In a political career of five decades, Banerjee has proved her critics wrong multiple times. After a bruis ing, months-long campaign, with her party winning 29 seats in Bengal — its second best Lok Sabha performance after 2014 when it won 34 — she has had the last laugh again. The tally has gone up substantially from 22 in 2019.
Leading the party with 108 public rallies and multiple road shows, one of which saw her walk 12km at a stretch on her south Kolkata home turf, Banerjee, 69, criss-crossed from Coochbehar in the northernmost extreme to South 24 Parganas, where Bengal meets the Bay of Bengal. She went to Nandigram, where she lost in 2021 (a legal battle is still on over BJP’s alleged electoral malpractices). And Sandeshkhali, where her partymen have been accused of rape and land-grab, before sting videos threw up a counter-narrative of allegations being “BJP-engineered”.
This journey, where PM Modi’s campaign has tried to shift the burden of anti-incumbency to the state govt, was to reach the hearts of Bengal’s women (through schemes like Lakshmir Bhandar) and its minorities (with about a quarter of the state’s votes), even trying to establish Trinamool as a nativist party of the Bengali-Hindu majority through references to Durga Puja (now a Unescorecognised “intangible cultural heritage”) and the legacy of Swami Vivekananda.
Questioned for her decision to go solo, which had the potential to split traditional minority votes, Banerjee has been proven right — the community stood rock solid behind her. By splitting the Bengal battle into a three-way contest, Trinamool’s gains outweigh its losses. In the close contests which went its way, Congress-Left vote shares were higher than Trinamool’s victory margins, indicating a split in anti-Trina mool votes. Difference in vote share in 2024 between Trinamool and BJP has widened to 10%.
With a final tally of 29 seats — third highest among opposition parties in India (after Congress and SP) — it gains more elbow room in INDIA bloc. That Left-Congress barely scraped through with one seat in Bengal also vindicates a pre-poll offer by Banerjee for 2-3 seats. The results may settle the unease in the Congress-Trinamool relationship. Banerjee has already said she disapproves of the way CPM “monitors” Congress in INDIA bloc.
Finally, the Trinamool win sets up a lot of expectations. Most importantly, Banerjee has promised to ease the central fund flow into MGNREGA in Bengal. Her social schemes have been a defining factor. A weakened BJP at the Centre, and a stronger INDIA bloc, allows her to go beyond the anti-Centre pitch and get work done.