As the polling dates inch closer, both the BJP and the TMC have started their attempts to polarise the voters on anti-TMC and anti-BJP lines.
West Bengal is ready to witness a triangular contest in the 2024 general election between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the state-ruling Party Trinamool Congress (TMC), and the I.N.D.I.A alliance consisting of Congress and the Left.
As the polling dates inch closer, both the BJP and the TMC have started their attempts to polarise the voters on anti-TMC and anti-BJP lines. The BJP is ensuring the voters that only the BJP, for being in power at the Centre and having control of central investigating agencies, can tackle the TMC’s misrule. On the other hand, TMC says that only they, as the state’s ruling party, can protect people from the troubles of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and any citizenship screening exercise.
The saffron party is also looking to encash the momentum of the Sandeshkhali incident on their side. It has found some energy since the public outburst against the TMC in the Sandeshkhali region of the Sundarbans. Owing to all these factors, the TMC may not be standing on as solid ground as they were three years ago. This was reflected in how the party fielded several new faces and as many as 11 sitting MLAs, including two ministers and a Rajya Sabha MP.
Although the BJP has gained momentum and looks confident about increasing its seat share, its vote share has also increased in Bengal. The party’s surge from a 17% vote share in 2014 to 40.7% in 2019 resulted in 18 Lok Sabha seats, and it will increase even more in 2024.
The saffron party has named eight sitting MLAs and Lok Sabha candidates among the first 39 names. The biggest name on their candidate list, though, is the former Calcutta high court judge, Abhijit Ganguly, the person who caused the third Mamata Banerjee government the greatest embarrassment with his series of orders and comments on the alleged school recruitment scam. Ganguly recently resigned from the judiciary and joined the BJP.
Furthermore, the Left-Congress alliance can upset the outcome of the 2024 Lok Sabha election if they manage to improve their performance.
They can upset the equations in several seats if they manage to get a 15–16 percent vote share. In this context, the most important development to watch out for is whether the Left-Congress alliance garners enough public support to break the TMC-BJP binary of Bengal politics.
Similarly, in several south Bengal districts, the TMC hopes that the potential recovery of the Left-Congress will weaken the BJP. In contrast, the BJP hopes to gain from votes in Muslim districts like Murshidabad, Malda, Uttar Dinajpur, North 24-Parganas, and South 24-Parganas if the Left-Congress alliance manages to dent the TMC’s support base among the Muslims. However, the same situation can be seen in Murshidabad and Baharampur, where the alliance candidates are CPI (M) state secretary Md Salim and Congress state president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, respectively. Both the seats are in Murshidabad district, the one with the state’s highest Muslim population, 47 lakh, according to the 2011 census. And the BJP hopes to gain Muslim votes because of the contest between the TMC and the I.N.D.I.A bloc.
The political pundits, who follow Bengal politics closely, told The Sunday Guardian that the BJP may have lost ground in some seats but it emerged victorious in 2019, for example, in Jalpaiguri, Alipuduar, Purulia, Bishnupur, Hooghly, Jhargram, Medinipur, and Bardhaman-Durgapur. Similarly, the TMC may have lost ground in some seats they currently hold some significant seats like Arambagh, Kolkata Uttar, Serampore, Basirhat, and Barasat.