What makes the functionaries and representatives of Bhartiya Janta Party excited and overwhelmed at the mention of West Bengal assembly elections. Why do they confuse somebody’s statement and sentence as an endorsement of Modi’s popularity and perception amongst different communities and groups of electorates? I believe that BJPs IT cell chief Amit Malviya should have displayed some restraint while offering his feedback on the edited excerpts of pollster Prashant Kishor predicting a Bhartiya Janta Party government in the state after May 02nd in a clubhouse chat.
According to the audio, the BJP’s popularity in Bengal has increased exponentially.
Amit Malviya’s recording cites that twenty-seven percent of the Dalit population are voting en bloc for Modi taking the battle away from didi, with the Muslim voters ending up splitting their votes. However, Prashant Kishor looking after the TMCs campaign and strategy vehemently denied and rubbished such claims made for arousing the sentiments, emotions, and hearts of the electorate as the state voted in the crucial fourth phase.
Last year in December on a show with Times Now political editor Navika Kumar Prashant Kishor agreed that for the BJP getting around a hundred seats will be marked by struggle and contestations. This is because the party is solely relying on borrowed and rented leaders of TMC, CPM, and Congress in the absence of a visible grass root cadre and a stable and strong party unit. Leave aside a strong CM candidate giving a contest to the incumbent chief minister Mamta Banerjee.
Mamta Banerjee is still people’s choice as for the voter’s disgruntlement and dissatisfaction with some of her party leaders, councilors, and ministers. Some defected, ditched, and deserted didi at the last moment making her task comparatively easier with the electorate able to distinguish a difference between wrong and right as they know two wrongs never make one right. A left alliance may mind a repeat of the 2019 general elections aiding the ascendancy of the Bhartiya Janta Party in the state with all its vitriolic rhetorics and rabid religious communalisation and polarization.’
Except for a few gains for the BJP in the North Bengal region where they performed brilliantly well, winning eighteen of the forty-two seats by perfectly arranging, organizing, and mobilizing a subaltern Hindutva compassion articulating the collective assertion and assimilation of religious and caste identity. A game that may not prove to be politically productive given Bengal’s brush with enlightenment producing some of the finest luminaries from a Tagore to Subhash Chandra Bose. Reality is more transparent and truthful than a reel with a penchant for pleasure and climax as we can sense it taking place right before our eyeballs.