Mamata Banerjee facing unprecedented crisis in her third term

Former Chief Ministers of Bengal, like Jyoti Basu to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, had multiple terms at the office. So did Mamata Banerjee before her current and third term as the Chief Minister. But never before any of them faced major buffers as they started each of their terms.

Kolkata: Former Chief Ministers of Bengal, like Jyoti Basu to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, had multiple terms at the office. So did Mamata Banerjee before her current and third term as the Chief Minister. But never before any of them faced major buffers as they started each of their terms. During Basu's tenure, there was the Bantala case and also the shooting of 13 youth Congress workers on 21 July 1993, while demanding Voter's Identity Card to be made the sole required document for voting. For Buddhadeb, there was the Singur, Nandigram and Netai crisis. But, all these came when both Basu and Bhattacharjee were well into their respective tenures.

For Mamata Banerjee, her third term is proving a hiccup from the very first day. From the strained relations between the Governor and the state government to the issue of post-poll violence and then the fake vaccination case, Mamata is embroiled in mounting pressure from multiple quarters. Why is this happening during the initial days of her tenure? Will there be a change in the pattern on how opposition parties placed themselves in West Bengal? What do the political observers and analysts have to say?

Undoubtedly Mamata Banerjee continues to enjoy the image of the most credible political face in the state. The results of the recently concluded West Bengal assembly elections have undoubtedly established that. Despite continuing to be quite popular nationally, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi's victory chariot has been stopped in West Bengal. However, BJP's target now is the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the Saffron leadership is quite aware that to keep the national throne in New Delhi intact in 2024, they will have to keep the Chief Minister too busy in her state so that she cannot concentrate on her national-level ambitions.

Political analysts believe that the third term of Mamata Bandopadhyay is quite different from her previous two terms. BJP, as the principal and the only opposition party in the state, is trying to create such pressure on the ruling party within and outside the state assembly since the very first day that it is bound to create a public perception that anything might happen with the current state government any day.

However, political analyst, Subhasish Moitra feels that if BJP goes over the board in this attempt it might come back to them like a boomerang. "However, I doubt whether the Union government will act in such a foolish manner at the end of the day. After the results of the 2021 polls, such over-the-board actions might yield negative results for the saffron camp at the end. I think that BJP in West Bengal is currently resorting to pressure tactics game theory and there might be some political equations behind these tactics. After the polls, cracks within the Bengal BJP have started becoming evident. So this pressure tactic is an indirect game to prevent cracks from getting wider," Moitra said.

Renowned political scientist and the former principal of the erstwhile Presidency College, Dr Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay said that BJP's emergence as the principal and only opposition party in the state has played a role in this pressure of the new state government from the very first day. "BJP is trying to expand its reach in the state. So they are trying to come out of the traditional path of opposition politics. At the same time the threats of Article 356 or President's rule to an elected government with a huge majority is part of those pressure tactics of BJP," Mukhopadhyay said.

Another political observer and the former Registrar of Calcutta University, Raja Gopal Dhar Chakraborty said that he does not personally feel that despite attempts to develop initial pressure on Trinamool Congress from the very first day, BJP had been successful in that attempt as of now. "However, since BJP is in power at the Centre so that they can afford to continue with the pressure tactics and hence the statements by state BJP leaders sound so ambitious. It is not easy to topple a government with over 200 seats so easily before the end of its term. Actually, BJP knows well that 2024 will be a difficult year for them unless they keep the ruling party in West Bengal under pressure from the very first day. So they have been trying to build up these pressure tactics since the beginning," he said.