New Delhi: The BJP, which was expected to release its first list of candidates for the West Bengal Assembly elections on Friday, decided to postpone it and finally released it on Saturday evening in view of the “unexpected” permutations and combinations that were used by TMC chief and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee while declaring the list of the TMC candidates on Thursday noon. The BJP’s list, declared by Arun Singh, BJP’s national general secretary in Delhi, contains 56 names for the first two phases in which 60 seats will go to polls on 27 March and 1 April. The party has given one seat, Baghmundi in Purulia district which shares its border with Jharkhand, to All Jharkhand Student Association (AJSU). As was being expected, former close aide of Mamata Banerjee, Suvendu Adhikari, who has now joined the BJP, will be fighting the CM from the prestigious Nandigram seat.
The TMC, as per BJP’s strategists, has dropped at least 57 of the MLAs who had won on a TMC symbol in 2016 which is far more than what they (BJP) were expecting. The TMC has fielded 94 new faces to counter the anti-incumbency wave that political observers believe is sweeping the state.
Secondly, it was expected that the TMC will give “relatively less” numbers of tickets to woman and SC/ST candidates, while increasing the number of Muslim candidates from what it had fielded in 2016.
However, none of these expectations and assumptions proved true. In the list declared by TMC on Thursday, the party gave tickets to 50 women candidates, and that is an increase of five women candidates this time from the 45 that it gave in the last Assembly election.
Majority of the dropped TMC MLAs have approached the BJP leadership for a ticket from the party and this, according to BJP sources, also led to the delay in the release of the BJP candidates’ list.
The TMC, while deciding its candidates, has focused more on the Schedule Caste and Scheduled Tribe community this time, which is being attributed to the fact that the BJP in the 2019 elections had done significantly well in the SC and ST dominated areas.
For the 2021 Assembly elections, the TMC has given tickets to 96 candidates belonging to the SC and ST communities, 12 more than the seats reserved for these two constituencies in the state. In the break-up of the SC and ST candidates of the TMC, the party has given tickets to 78 SC candidates, which is 10 more than what is reserved for SCs in the state, and 17 to ST candidates, while ST reserved seats in the state are 16. TMC party sources said that Mamata Banerjee has focused on SC/ST candidates given the changing political scenario in the state. “SCs and STs had voted significantly in favour of the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and it was realised that the SC and ST votes were slipping from the TMC vote bank, keeping this in mind a greater number of tickets were distributed to these candidates. Moreover, caste was never a factor in Bengal, but then, it was realised that the BJP had turned Caste and identity politics into a major factor in Bengal and this has led to the increase in the number of these candidates,” a senior TMC leader aware of developments said. A drop in the number of Muslims candidates has also not gone unnoticed by political observers. The party has given ticket to 46 Muslim candidates this time, down from 57 what it had fielded in 2016 assembly polls. This, party insiders say, was done to arrest the image of Banerjee being “pro Muslim” and “anti-Hindu”. These “developments” have led to the BJP to go back to their drawing room to re-strategize, as this, as per multiple senior BJP leaders, was “unexpected”.
“We are studying the list of the TMC. We are in no hurry to release our list. We are also studying the caste composition that the TMC has used. The number of Muslim candidates has also reduced from Mamata’s list and this is something we would be looking into keenly. The women factor is also something we will try to take care of,” a Kolkata-based BJP leader from Bengal said.