 You're watching News Made Easy. I'm Anandya Chakravarty and today I'm going to be talking about a very interesting state election that's coming up this summer. And that's West Bengal. Why is it crucial? Because even though the left front was defeated by Mamta Banerjee 10 years ago, West Bengal is still considered to be the stronghold of left ideology in this country. And many analysts, political scientists believe that the BJP can never win West Bengal. So for the first time ever and that is what makes it crucial, the BJP is within striking distance of winning that state. Can Mamta Banerjee hold on? Can the left Congress Alliance make a surprise comeback? That's what we're going to look at in this episode. Stay tuned. Since the assembly elections of 2006, West Bengal has had very long drawn out elections. There used to be five phase elections, then we moved to six phase elections, seven phase elections and now this time it's going to have eight phases, the longest we've had through all these years. The elections are going to start on the 27th of March when the first phase of voting takes place and then the last phase of voting is on the 29th of April and then exactly one month from now on the 2nd of May, we're going to know who's won those elections, whether Mamta Banerjee comes back or she's out. Mamta Banerjee understandably has been pretty unhappy with this long drawn out process and she has indicated that the Election Commission has been acting on behest of the BJP making it easy for the Prime Minister and other leaders to campaign in West Bengal. She pointed out that West Bengal has 294 seats and it's going to vote over eight phases, over one month, more than a month and Tamil Nadu which is 234 seats, just 60 seats less will vote in a single day. So she's pointed that out but her critics also point out to her that in 2011 when there were six phases of elections, that's when she was in the opposition she was actually very happy with the EC for doing that. She praised them and said that she welcomes this long drawn out election because that's needed to maintain the law and order situation there. So at that time obviously she was in opposition trying to enter and become Chief Minister now she's the incumbent Chief Minister. So she doesn't want a very long drawn out election. So what exactly is making Mamta Banerjee nervous? To understand that we'll have to actually rewind to 2014 and look at the vote shares in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. That's when Mamta Banerjee's party got close to 39, more than 39% votes and the BJP did reasonably well. It got close to 17% vote. The left front got nearly 30% votes and the Congress got about 9.5 odd percent. So that was 2014 and the BJP as you can see did better than before but still wasn't anywhere close to posing a challenge to Mamta Banerjee. In 2019 what happened? Mamta Banerjee actually performed better. The Trinimal Congress went up to 43% of the votes, a 4% client. But look at what happened to the BJP. The BJP went from 17% to more than 40%. That is suddenly the BJP looked pretty scary to Mamta Banerjee and how did that happen? Well you can see what happened to the left front's vote. It went from, as I said nearly 30%, it dropped to just 7.5%, losing almost 75% of its vote share. It fell to just 25% of what it was and the Congress lost about 40% of its vote share and dropped to about 5.5%. As you can see on these graphs. Now look at it closely now. The difference between Trinimal Congress and BJP became just 3%. And I wanted to make you understand this. Obviously as soon as I say this you will understand that this is common sense. A 3% gap is safe for only 1.5% swing. Because if the swing is more than 1.5% away from Trinimal towards BJP, what happens? The BJP goes to more than 41% and the Trinimal Congress falls below 41.5% and goes to second position. So just a 1.5%, a little over 1.5% swing there can cost the Mauta Banerjee elections. Now as the first graph would have told you that it is very clear that the BJP's rise has taken place at the cost of the left and the Congress. And if I just compare the left and the, at the BJP and the left, what am I seeing? Almost entire vote share of that the left lost went to the BJP. On the face of it, this was an amazing trapeze act by the West Bengal voter. To swing right from the left from the CPIM to the right to the BJP. Is it because suddenly the left voter started liking Hindutva? No, opposition parties and those who are political scientists who study West Bengal say that for this ultimately it is Mauta Banerjee and the Trinimal Congress which are to blame or at least they are responsible for this. And why am I saying this? To understand that let's try and understand what happens in rural West Bengal. In 2011 when the left front lost power and Mauta Banerjee came to power she had to try and uproot the left front party structure from the villages because if she couldn't do that she would not have a long-term space there. But that was a difficult process and you can see that in the 2013 Panchayat elections which took place exactly 2 years later. About 11% of the Panchayat seats in 2013 went uncontested which means there was no opposition candidate there which is not significantly high. That happens in many states at village level in Panchayat elections. But of the remaining seats where there had been democratic elections where multiple candidates had fought, Trinimal could win only 45% of the seats. So now think about it, there was just one year left in 2014 and when we come to 2014 we see that the left front still has a significant base significant base in West Bengal because look at this graph and it will tell you that when I add the left front and Congress parties votes together and remember they are in alliance right now then you get something which is very close just a shade below what the Trinimal Congress got. So the Trinimal Congress realized, Mauta Banerjee realized that an alliance between the left front and the Congress party can be extremely dangerous and we see that happening in 2016. So after 2014 and as the run up it came closer and closer to 2016 campaign of violence was unleashed against the opposition in villages. Many people had to go away, leave their villages, move to make shift camps and you have evidence of this not only just what opposition parties were saying but also you see that in news reports of that time. Then Mauta Banerjee managed to win the left Congress alliance of 2016 didn't work Mauta Banerjee came back to power and we see that the process actually gets even worse. A literal reign of terror starts and you get a sense of that in the 2018 Panchayat elections. Keep an eye on what I said is the uncontested seats in Panchayat because that tells you that opposition candidates are not even being able to stand for elections and in 2018 what happened first look at 2013 as I mentioned 11% of seats went uncontested and in 2018 that rose to 34%. One in three Panchayat seat was actually one uncontested by the Trinamool Congress and at that time when we look at the results this case went to the Supreme Court as well and when we look at the results we see that the Trinamool Congress won 78% of all Grand Panchayats which is the lowest level the village level 87% of all Panchayat Samithis the second tier and then when we come to the Zilla Parishad the highest tier we get 96% of the district level Zilla Parishad Panchayat election seats were won by the Trinamool Congress. In Bengali in Bengali politics there is a term that is used called Ilakadakul in Hindi it would come to Ilakadakul in effect taking full control of an area that is what the Trinamool Congress had done by 2018 and what it did in that entire period in this huge campaign of violence it effectively pushed the left voter to anyone who could give them shelter and who could do that only another powerful party and who was the only other powerful party which is the only other powerful party obviously the BJP with deep pockets and a central government and a very very charismatic powerful leader who was the first Prime Minister with a full majority in three decades. So here was Narendra Modi to whom the left supporter the left voter the Congress voter could turn to and say save us from what is happening to us and that's precisely what we see that people who were scared of the Trinamool Congress went to look for shelter with the BJP so left and Congress voters who were not ideological supporters of the BJP's policies still went and voted for the BJP because they thought that this is a party which can save us that was the number one reason why that happened of course there were other reasons as well Trinamool Congress appeared to be corrupt and people thought that the Modi regime was going to be more pro-development and it is less corrupt so of course that's one key reason why people voted for him a significant section also were unhappy with what they considered to be Mahmata Banerjee's Muslim appeasing policies and that also pushed some specially uppercast Hindus towards the BJP now despite that the data suggests surveys suggest that West Bengal is not a place where the BJP can win entirely on Hindutva politics a post poll survey done by CSDS Lokniti in 2019 and that is after the BJP had won 40% of the votes there just a shade below Trinamool Congress and the post poll survey actually matches the assessment that BJP cannot win only on Hindutva and I'm going to give you a few pointers there that when a question was asked that should the Prime Minister of India be secular 90% said yes 84% of the voters who were surveyed said that India belongs to everyone not just Hindus 90% of the surveyed voters also said that Muslims are not anti-national this is a question that was asked across India and in other states that rate was just 75% so in West Bengal 90% said no Muslims are not anti-national and those who voted for BJP 60% of them said that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was wrong and unjustified now this is one of the core things of the BJP's ideology one of the reasons why many people since 1990s have voted for the BJP despite that the fact that these people voted for the BJP 60% of them said demolition of the Babri Masjid was not justified so you can clearly say that Hindutva isn't the reason BJP got such a massive boost in 2019 it was obviously the anti-Trinamool voter looking for shelter somewhere where there was a powerful party and a powerful leader the question of course is that is Mamta Banerjee going to be able to increase this 3% gap between her and the BJP some people say well state elections are different Mamta is clearly the charismatic leader there and even if the prime minister comes and campaigns there people know that he is not going to be the chief minister and in West Bengal the BJP doesn't really have a credible chief ministerial face but the question is that has the BJP got the momentum required to topple Mamta Banerjee in 2019 40% does that mean that there are many others who would have voted for the BJP but thought that it cannot win right will they can now come and vote for the BJP and help it move above Mamta Banerjee or is there a chance that in these two years many people who voted for the BJP are likely to go back to the left front and congress alliance is it possible that left front's alliance with the ISF the so called Indian secular front is going to help it gain back some of the Muslim votes that is a very interesting thing to look at in fact we'll know what happens in just a couple of months not too long to know that