ANALYSIS. BJP mulls Bengal strategy after 2014 gains wear off

The BJP’s Central Election Committee (CEC) met on Wednesday to decide on its second list of 194 candidates for West Bengal, a State where unexpected gains owing to the ‘Modi wave’ of 2014 have considerably dissipated in the months that followed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi drove up to the party headquarters in Ashoka Road to parley with BJP President Amit Shah and senior ministers Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh among others on the choice of candidates for the poll-bound State.

In the list that was announced, prominent names included former State president Rahul Sinha and actor Rupa Ganguly, once famous for playing Draupadi in the popular tele-serial Mahabharata. Ganguly is also heads the women’s wing of the BJP in West Bengal.

While Ganguly, who had been hoping to be projected as the party’s chief ministerial candidate, was not believed to be overjoyed at the prospect of contesting from Howrah North, the seat she coveted – Jorasanko – was allotted to Sinha, her bête noire. Other party notables in the list included former media convenor Ritesh Tiwari from Chowranghee, and the party’s youth wing President Amitava Roy from Barrackpur.

The BJP’s ambition to build on its newfound strength in West Bengal has faded in the months since the general elections, owing to infighting and ego tussles. Moreover, the first signs of the Modi factor’s appeal, always limited in West Bengal, have dimmed since the general elections. This was reflected in the municipal elections last year when the Trinamool Congress asserted itself by winning a staggering 71 of the 92 civic bodies in West Bengal.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee asserted her political supremacy by grabbing as many as 114 of the 144 wards in Kolkata. The Left too gained ground, especially with its victory in the second-biggest Siliguri Municipal Corporation, and the trumping of the BJP by about ten percentage points in Kolkata. The Left, however, still remained a distant second at 29.6 per cent vote share across the State, as against the Trinamool’s impressive 42 per cent.

But the BJP was clearly unable to build on its gains, winning just seven wards with an estimated 15 per cent vote share.

While the party has maintained that the results were largely owing to mass-rigging by the TMC, it is still a long way off from matching the ruling party in West Bengal either in cadre strength or popularity.

The space that it had cornered in the Lok Sabha elections is steadily being overtaken by the Left and the Congress which have struck a tacit alliance in the State.

The “disinformation” campaign by Congress to “defame” the Modi government, the Ishrat Jahan and JNU rows, besides the “pro-poor and rural-centric” budget will be the key issues on the agenda at BJP’s two-day National Executive meet beginning here on March 19.

“The Opposition, especially Congress, has been exposed in the last 20 months over a host of issues, be it returning of awards by a section of intelligentsia or JNU row where it chose to side with anti-national forces. These will come up for discussion,” a party leader said.

Elections to four State Assemblies, and the Union Territory of Pondicherry, in April-May will be part of the deliberations during which Uttar Pradesh, which will go to the polls early next year and where BJP’s stakes are high, may also figure.

The need to inform the masses about the “pro-poor and pro-village” aspects of the budget will be stressed upon at the meeting, party sources said, adding that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will be the main speaker on the issue.

The party’s office-bearers will meet on Saturday and the much-larger Executive will go into a huddle in the afternoon.

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