 I'm going to start with a quiz question today. Do you know which is the first Bollywood movie to earn more than a hundred crore rupees? You can't guess it. It was disco dancer which made Mithun Chakravarty a big Bollywood star and he became famous not only in India but actually all over the world especially in the Soviet block in Eastern Europe. The movie made hundred crores in 1982 and if you think about it adjusted for inflation that's close to 1500 1600 crore rupees today. That's how big that movie was. But it wasn't Mithun's debut. In fact Mithun Chakravarty didn't make his debut in Hindi commercial cinema. His first film was directed by the famous Bengali director Meenal Sen and it was called Mrigaya. Mithun acted in that and he won the national award for best actor in that movie. In fact he went on to win another national award for best actor and another for national award for best supporting actor. So three national awards as an actor. That's what Mithun Chakravarty won. And if you think about it in most people's minds Mithun Chakravarty is essentially the disco dancer. He acted in in these Hindi commercial movies and later on in B-grade low-budget Hindi movies and that is what he became famous for. In fact if you think about it his big appeal has always been amongst the working classes, amongst the urban poor. Now Mithun was not just an actor. He was always politically pretty active. He wasn't a full-time politician. In fact he started off by his own admission as a naxalite. He was underground or he was in hiding and he had links with the naxal leader Charu Mazumdar. Till his brother died in a freak accident and he came back home and his father said leave West Bengal. So he went to Pune, joined the film and television institute of India FTII and from there he went to Mumbai and that is how he made it big in Bollywood. But as I said that he always had his connection with politics especially left politics. He was a great supporter and fellow traveler of the left front of the CPIM. He was close to West Bengal's former sports minister the late Subhash Chakravarty. He had a decent equation with Jyoti Basu as well and he did a lot, gave his time, gave his money to projects on the ground which the left front was pushing for the people. So Mithun had a very clearly identified role in West Bengal on the ground as a left oriented actor. So why would the BJP choose such a person? Why would they choose a person who's identified with the left in West Bengal to be the de facto face in the state? He's already passed his prime. He's 70 years old. Why are they choosing this man? Can he really make a difference? To know the answers keep watching this episode. In my last episode I told you how the BJP rose in West Bengal. Its phenomenal rise from 2014 to 2019. It had 17% votes in 2014 and that went to more than 40% in 2019. On the face of it it all came from the left front. The left front dropped more than 22% and the BJP gained 23% and you can watch that episode. We'll give the link in the description but obviously it's not as simple as that. In fact if one looks at the core catchment area of the BJP which is generally the majority Hindus it has always had a much higher vote share there and gets a very small vote share of Muslims. So in West Bengal 73% of the population is Hindu and about 27 odd percent is Muslim. So if you look at it the BJP's vote share in the Hindu space actually rose pretty sharply and the Trinamool Congress also lost Hindu votes. It's about 5 odd percent Hindu votes was lost by the Trinamool Congress. How do I know that? This is projected by CSDS Lokniti's post poll survey in 2019 which tends to be a little more accurate because people have already voted. They're not telling you who they'll vote for. They've already voted. They have had time to think about whether they should reveal or not. So that tends to be a little bit more accurate. Never as accurate but you can see a trend. So therefore you can say the Trinamool Congress definitely lost 5-6% of the Hindu vote to the BJP and it gained Muslim votes from the left and the Congress because Muslim voters saw a polarization. They wanted to vote for the voter. They thought we'll win. They saw that the left and Congress is not winning. So they moved to the Trinamool. 8% gain from there and 5% loss of the Hindu votes to the BJP and therefore a 3% gain 8-5 3% gain for the Trinamool as well. Now where has the BJP got most of its vote share from? Yes it has increased in the upper caste space. Upper caste have also had voted for BJP earlier as well and throughout we've seen since 1991 there has been a certain upper caste vote for the BJP in 2014 as well. There's been a strong upper caste vote. The big gains for the BJP from the mostly from the left but a significant chunk from the Trinamool as well has been in the OBC Dalit and Adivasi section from the left mostly in OBC and Dalit. Now what has been the BJP strategy here? The BJP's rhetoric has been that OBCs and Dalits have been ignored in West Bengal and it is even though it has been a so-called left oriented party a left party Dalits and OBCs have not had enough representation in the leadership of the left or in government and even now it doesn't have significant representation. Now this particular thing can border on an anti-upper caste rhetoric which can drive upper caste away from you. So this has always been a problem for the BJP. How do you balance holding onto the upper caste vote while getting the OBC and Dalit vote along with you and upper caste might be 12-13% of West Bengal's population but they're essentially concentrated in the urban areas and urban areas have significant number of seats. So if you have a concentration of upper caste around Kolkata among some of the bigger cities of West Bengal then the BJP can't afford to alienate that. So that is where Mithun Chakravarty comes in as an answer. Number one, Mithun Chakravarty appeals to the poor. He has done work on the ground and number two, he himself is upper caste. So as a face is an upper caste face who builds that bridge for the BJP. Another big thing is that the BJP does not have a strong leader in the state because what we've seen in 2019 and in the elections that took place in 2018 and in 2020 the entire space, we've seen that the BJP has gained dramatically in the center. People have voted for Narendra Modi for the center but those same people when it came to state elections have not voted for the BJP. It started with Karnataka, then we saw it happen in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and in Chhattisgarh. We saw that happen to a certain extent even earlier in Gujarat. Then we saw that happen after the elections, after the 2019 elections it got repeated in Maharashtra and Haryana. All these places where the BJP did extremely well in 2019 Lok Sabha elections because all of these places had an opposition face who could be put up for voters to go and vote for. So therefore the Modi factor might not work as strongly in state elections simply because you don't have a strong local face to back and now that the BJP doesn't have that. Dilip Ghosh the leader is not really that bigger face in West Bengal. Mithun Chakravarti on the other hand as I said is a star. He's been a huge star in West Bengal throughout and number two he has also done some political work in the left's core base. So there is that space within the left which will identify with Mithun Chakravarti. So this is a card that the BJP is playing. The question is that how far will people actually vote for a person who is being identified now as someone who is a party hopper. He was at one time an axolite by his own admission, fellow traveler of the CPIM for a long time. Trinamul Congress, Mamta Banerjee sent him to the Rajya Sabha. He didn't last there for long just two odd years and then he quit and now coming to the BJP. So for the extreme left to the right a journey that to many people appears to be something that is a person who cannot be trusted. That is what the rhetoric will be from the opposition and maybe many voters will say that as well. As I said Mamta Banerjee is the strongest leader there. The left is clearly in its rallies, left Congress rallies. It appears that it's making a comeback. If that happens that the left makes a comeback and the BJP loses some of the votes that it took from the left and the BJP is going to have trouble there. Of course we'll know what happens in early May.