Kolkata: There are citadels and there are fortresses. For the BJP, North Bengal is the latter.
It is now less than a day that three parliamentary seats in the northern parts of Bengal will go to the polls. Soon after the first phase on April 19, another set of three seats from the northern region will be in line for the second phase on April 26. And much of BJP’s hopes are pinned on these six seats to keep their Bengal fortress intact.
The BJP knows that if they want to renew their 2019 best-ever performance of 18 seats and to keep afloat hopes of gaining a couple more in Bengal, the party’s first trump card is this northern part of the state. But, is the saffron party finding itself in a tough spot this time or will it be a cakewalk for it?
In the first phase of polls in Bengal Alipurduar, Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri seats are up for grabs. All three seats had been a clean sweep for the BJP in 2019. In Cooch Behar, Nisith Pramanik had won on a BJP ticket by over 54,000 votes after jumping sides from the Trinamool Congress ahead of the elections.
Nisith was made Minister of State for Home Affairs in the Union government. This time again, the party has kept faith in Pramanik. Pitted against him is Trinamool Congress candidate Jagadish Chandra Basunia, the sitting MLA from the Sitai Assembly seat. Both the Congress and the Left are also contesting from this seat.
There is no doubt that Nisith has a good base in Cooch Behar, but so does Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet minister and Dinhata MLA Udayan Guha. Nisith and Udayan have been at loggerheads for some time now and have even engaged in fisticuffs on the streets, setting a new low among legislators in the state. Guha will certainly throw all his weight behind Basunia to secure a win for the Trinamool and grab the seat from BJP.
The Jalpaiguri seat, on the other hand, is all set to witness an interesting contest. Dr Jayanta Kumar Roy, the sitting BJP MP has been re-nominated and he faces Trinamool’s Professor Nirmal Chandra Roy and CPI (M’)s young candidate Debraj Burman. In this triangular contest, it will be worth noting how Jayanta Roy fights the anti-incumbency factor and how Nirmal Roy turns his mark, which he made after winning the Dhupguri by-polls last year, indelible.
Incidentally, the Rajbanshi community, the largest scheduled caste (SC) group in Bengal, holds considerable sway on the two seats of Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri. Cooch Behar has an SC population of over 50 per cent, making them a prized possession for every political party ahead of any election.
Once a Left Front bastion with a Forward Bloc candidate winning the seat in all elections between 1967 and 2009, veered towards the Trinamool Congress in 2014 and then to the BJP in 2019. It was not just Nisith Pramanik’s win that grabbed many eyeballs in the last general election. It was also the mercurial rise of the BJP’s vote share, which witnessed a 31.64% leap!
The BJP has left no stone unturned in its effort to secure Rajbanshi votes. They have nominated community scion Ananta Roy alias Ananta Maharaj to the Rajya Sabha. But, what exactly happened in two subsequent bypolls in the region, one in Cooch Behar’s Dinhata Assembly seat and the other in neighbouring Jalpaiguri’s Dhupguri Assembly seat, came as a shocker for the saffron party. Turning the tide, Trinamool wrested both seats from the BJP and that too, with convincing margins. Even Ananta Maharaj’s campaign in Dhupguri could not cut ice. The once-considered impregnable fort for the BJP had developed serious cracks.
Last year’s panchayat election was a double whammy for the BJP. The party, which fared exceptionally well in the 2021 Assembly elections after winning several seats from North Bengal, was decimated. The Trinamool Congress was back in the driving seat. The lush tea gardens that dot the entire Alipurduar Lok Sabha constituency, also hold the key to the seat’s political outcome. Once painted in red by the Left with the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) turning synonymous with this seat, the Left has waned and faded since the Trinamool swept to power in Bengal in 2011.
The RSS has been silently making inroads among the Adivasi community, largely working in the tea gardens and it showed colour in 2019 elections. The Adivasi Vikas Parishad, which had much sway here, are now part of the BJP. The saffron party has changed its candidate this time in Alipurduar and replaced sitting MP John Barla with Manoj Tigga, the MLA from Madarihat and BJP’s chief whip in the Assembly.
Tigga faces a formidable opponent in the name of Prakash Chik Baraik, the Trinamool Congress district president and a man known for his organisational skills. Trinamool also hopes to grab this seat after serious differences cropped up between Barla and Tigga, with the former being denied a ticket. Though both sides have buried their hatchets for now, TMC hopes to gain from the simmering discontent.
The BJP will always expect that the implementation of the CAA rules and the community votes of the Rajbanshis and Adivasis (tribals) from the tea gardens will provide a political windfall in their favour. But, factional feud within the party and depleting organisational strength are posing serious challenges to the saffron party, for whom, the North Bengal seats are a must-win if they aspire to better their 2019 tally.
The Trinamool Congress, on the other hand, will surely channelise all resources to keep up the momentum they got since the panchayat elections and turn the tables against the BJP in the North of Bengal.
