Kolkata: The scene is different this time, with limited pre-poll poaching. Disgruntled TMC MLA Tapas Roy has joined the BJP and is contesting from the Kolkata Uttar seat against his bete noire, TMC veteran Sudip Bandyopadhyay. Disgruntled BJP MLA Muktmani Adhikary has bagged the TMC’s ticket from Ranaghat Lok Sabha.

Besides, BJP MP Arjun Singh, who switched over to the TMC in 2022, went back to BJP after the TMC denied him the ticket from Barrackpore, and got renominated by the saffron party. Two BJP MLAs who switched sides after the 2021 election have bagged TMC Lok Sabha nominations.

In 2019, incidents like the Pulwama terror attack and Balakot air strike fuelled the BJP’s campaign on the ultra-nationalist line, and Banerjee’s criticism of the Modi government on these issues led to sharp polarisation – all the more so as the TMC had pitched Banerjee as the deciding force in forming the next Union government.

Turncoats dominated the discussion ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election in West Bengal. But not this time.In 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s election campaign in the eastern state effectively started in January, when Bishnupur MP Saumitra Khan of chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) switched over to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party.

Over the next three months, Lok Sabha MP Anupam Hazra and MLAs Biswajit Das, Sunil Singh, Tushar Kanti Bhattacharya, Subhranshu Roy, Wilson Champramari, Dulal Bar, Sukra Munda and Sabyasachi Dutta joined the BJP. The BJP leadership claimed that it was only a matter of time before Bengal’s ruling party got splintered.

However, the BJP’s poaching drive had a setback in 2021. Not only had 13 of the 19 turncoat MLAs contesting on BJP tickets lost, but also Mamata Banerjee returned to power with a three-fourths majority. Thereafter, seven BJP MLAs switched over to the TMC.

This time, BJP’s hypernationalistic narrative is mellowed, and the TMC is rarely talking about the formation of the next Union government. Both parties have set their focus more on the local issues of West Bengal.

In 2019, the debates over citizenship – a proposed citizenship law for Hindus and a nationwide citizenship screening exercise, popularly referred to as the CAA-NRC debate – further polarised the voters.

This time, the BJP’s campaign as of April 10 has rarely touched upon any citizenship screening exercise. Even though they have kept their promise of implementing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) by notifying the Rules in March, they are mentioning it only defensively — to counter the TMC’s campaign calling it “a trap” — and not proactively.

The 2019 election was fought with high-decibel hyperbolic campaigns, including personal attacks. If Modi repeatedly targeted Banerjee and her nephew, Abhishek, referring to them as Didi and Bhaipo, Banerjee too targeted Modi personally. This time, personal attacks have not entered the scene yet.

In 2019, the BJP focused on blasting the TMC and criticized the Left only in the passing. They even said that the Left was not as bad as the TMC. The Left, too, focused on attacking the TMC rule. This time, the BJP and the Left are targeting each other far more.

“The BJP carried out a devastating campaign in 2019, bombarding the state with big rallies and threatening to throw out the TMC. This time, they are raising almost the same issues but the aggression and arrogance is missing,” said Udayan Bandyopadhyay, an associate professor of political science at Bangabasi College in Kolkata.

He added that the TMC, instead of claiming to have a role to play in government formation, has remained focused on Bengal’s development. “The campaign of both BJP and TMC is focused more on Bengal-centric issues this time,” he said.

Behind this are the changes that have taken place in the state’s political space over the past five years.

Learning from past experience

One of the major visible changes is the absence of BJP leaders, organisers and campaigners from outside the state.

Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP’s state unit in-charges who were part of the national leadership and were from other states, were seen in a prominent role. Kailash Vijayvargiya, Shiv Prakash and Arvind Menon were at the forefront of their battle for Bengal.

This time, none of the BJP’s Bengal in-charges, Sunil Bansal, Satish Dhondh, Amit Malviya, Mangal Pandey and Asha Lakra, have been at the forefront. In fact, over the past two years, they have rarely been seen in the public or the media, whereas the pre-2021 in-charges were all over the media.

In 2019, organisers were sent from other states as vistaraks (limited-period whole-timers) for all Lok Sabha constituencies. There is no news of such batches of organisers arriving in the state this time.

If Bengal BJP leaders are to be believed, it is a conscious decision of the party.

“Our 2018-2021 approach of helping the state unit with organisers from outside was seen by many in Bengal as an ‘attempt to conquer Bengal’. The TMC’s bohiragoto (outsider) campaign found credence. We don’t want to be seen as conquerors. We want to win over Bengal,” said a state unit leader who did not want to be identified.

He added that vistaraks were no longer required because the grassroots-level organisations have been formalised and consolidated over the past five years.

Similarly, avoiding issues like NRC and CAA is also a conscious decision, as the party did not want “a pro-TMC consolidation of Muslim votes and secular Hindu votes”, said the leader.

Among the changes observed so far, political scientist Biswanath Chakraborty noted how Modi has stopped personal attacks targeting Banerjee and her nephew and, instead, taken to accusing the whole TMC ecosystem of corruption. He also pointed to how BJP leaders from outside the state have become less visible, and how the use and display of muscle power has been less this time.

On the TMC’s part, Chakraborty noticed a clear division of responsibilities, with Banerjee leading the campaign and Abhishek looking after the organisational issues.

“The BJP has set its focus on the issue of atrocities on women, highlighting what happened in Sandeshkhali. It is interesting to see a significant presence of women in the BJP’s rallies, which was not visible in 2019,” said Chakraborty, a professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata.

He added that the Left’s social media presence has significantly increased and that all of the TMC, BJP and Left are engaging in the spread of misinformation. “Misinformation has become more rampant this time,” he told The Wire.

Another veteran BJP organiser, however, said that the party has not shunned its Hindu polarisation agenda but has merely changed strategy.

“The Hindu polarisation is happening at the grassroots level, through local meetings and WhatsApp groups, but not from public rallies. Raising Hindu issues from big public rallies will also lead to Muslim polarisation in favour of TMC, which we do not want,” the leader explained.

In 2021, a strong Muslim polarisation in favour of the TMC ruined the BJP’s chances in many assembly seats that the BJP hoped to win.

The TMC, on the other hand, has kept its focus on Banerjee’s development schemes, telling people how the TMC can best serve Bengal.

A veteran journalist who has been travelling across different districts for one of West Bengal’s major TV news channels told The Wire, “As of now, it sounds more like a campaign for the panchayat election. National issues are only in the periphery, while local governance, benefits and corruption dominate the discourse.”

Changed equations

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP made huge gains, increasing their tally from two to 18 seats by securing 40.6% of polled votes. The TMC’s vote share increased to 43.7% from 39.8% in 2014 but a sharp shift of traditional Left votes to the BJP ensured there was no division in the opposition votes and the TMC’s tally came down to 22 from 34. The Congress managed to win two seats while the Left drew a blank.

However, the BJP’s dismal 2021 assembly election performance took a lot of steam out of its Bengal campaign. Subsequently, in the 2022-23 municipal and panchayat elections, the Left managed to recover a section of the votes it had lost to the BJP.

After securing only 7% vote in the 2019 Lok Sabha and 5.7% in the 2021 assembly election, the Left secured 14% votes in the 2022 election in 108 municipalities and 13.2% votes in the 2023 panchayat elections.

In contrast, the BJP’s vote share in the 2022 civil polls stood at 13% and 23% in the 2023 panchayat elections.

This year, a significant change is noticeable in the approach of the Left, especially the CPI(M). Their campaign targets the BJP no less than the TMC. At several public rallies, CPI(M) candidates have been heard saying that if the TMC has been “stealing directly from the public’s pocket”, the BJP was “robbing the country’s exchequer”.

Besides, they have managed to ally with the Congress in most seats, hoping to play a more effective role as the third force in the fray. Going by the panchayat and municipal election trends, the Left-Congress combine can play a crucial role in determining the results of seats like Hooghly, Serampore, Baharampore, Maldah Uttar, Maldah Dakshin, Murshidabad, Raiganj, Purulia, Bankura, Bardhaman Purba and Bardhaman-Durgapur, among others.

One of the major changes in the situation since 2021 has been how the TMC has gotten embroiled in a series of corruption charges – from the alleged school recruitment scam and coal and cattle smuggling scam to the ration scam. While the scope of Laxmir Bhandar – an already popular scheme among women – has been improved, there is also resentment over corruption at the grassroots level, glimpses of which were exposed during the Sandeshkhali agitations.

Maidul Islam, a political scientist at Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), told The Wire that the hypernationalism of 2019 is missing from the BJP campaign this time. While the party’s focus on TMC’s corruption has remained intact, they have added the issue of atrocities on women following the Sandeshkhali agitations, he said.

Islam pointed out that the TMC’s 2019 campaign did not have the anti-outsider pitch and Bengali-ethnic identity issues, which they introduced ahead of the 2021 assembly election and are continuing this time.

“The TMC has now taken a distinct anti-Delhi stance, considering that Bengal has a long history of harbouring anti-Delhi sentiments, starting from the period of Mughal rule. The Left had successfully used this anti-Delhi sentiment during its rule and now the TMC is trying to cash on it,” Islam told The Wire.

Regarding the CPI(M)’s campaign targeting the BJP significantly more than in 2019, Islam remarked, “They seemed to have realised their primary contradiction is with the BJP and that this election is about toppling the Modi government.”

(This story has not been edited by News Mania staff and is published from a Media Release)