The kindest thing that can be said of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s indifferent performance in the series of byelections since the general election last May is that they are a pointer to the significant role played by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in ensuring the decisive Lok Sabha outcome.
With politics reverting from the national to the local, the everyday alignments that were subsumed in the country’s yearning for a leader have once come to the surface. Increasingly Indians are voting differently at the national, state and local levels, thereby making life more challenging to the political parties.
The reasons why the byelections of the past two months have produced results that diverge significantly from the Lok Sabha polls are, therefore, not prone to uniform explanations. What is however clear is that the BJP vote has fallen — albeit unevenly — in almost all the states where byelections have been held.
The only state where this decline was less markedly felt was in the two byelections to the West Bengal Assembly. In the Chowringhee constituency, in the heart of central Kolkata, the BJP vote fell by just one per cent despite a 9.7 per cent lower turnout compared to May 2014; and in Basirhat Dakshin, in the North 24 Parganas district close to the Bangladesh border, the BJP vote declined by 2.1 per cent, almost matching the nominal decline in voter turnout.
These statistics are revealing for two reasons. First, in a state where party organisation and voter mobilisation plays a greater role than in northern, central and western India, the BJP, despite its lack of a robust organisation, was able to keep its vote share broadly intact.
Second, unlike in the other states where the absence of the “Modi bulge” was felt in the Assembly byelections, the BJP has not lost momentum after the Lok Sabha polls. On the contrary, by winning the Basirhat Dakshin seat and opening its account in the state Assembly and coming second in Chowringhee, it appears to have overtaken the Communist Party of India (Marxist) as the principal opposition to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress.
For a party that was a fringe player in the Assembly polls of 2011, this is a phenomenal achievement. The CPM may still be better organised with its band of dedicated supporters nurtured by 34 years of uninterrupted Left Front rule, but the BJP has succeeded in capturing a large share of the Opposition space in less than a year.
To be fair, the byelections also indicate that the Trinamul Congress has made huge advances since its sweep of the Lok Sabha seats in May 2014.
In Chowringhee, a seat it wrested from the Congress, the Trinamul Congress vote increased by 9.7 per cent and its candidate in Basirhat Dakshin polled an extra 12.1 per cent vote and came within a whisker of winning the seat.
A disaggregated scrutiny of the results show that this gain was essentially at the cost of the Congress and CPM. In Chowringhee, the Congress vote fell by 7.2 per cent compared to May 2014, whereas the CPM held its own, declining by 0.2 per cent.
In Basirhat Dakshin, a seat that is more or less evenly divided between rural and semi-urban clusters, the CPM secured 8.4 per cent less vote while the Congress support fell by 1.1 per cent. The CPM decline was particularly marked in the rural areas of the constituency.
The Left appears to be on the verge of a complete meltdown in rural Bengal and its erstwhile supporters are flocking to the Trinamul Congress.
In Kolkata, the BJP’s good showing has been viewed as a significant morale booster for that section whose enthusiastic support for the poriborton promised by Ms Banerjee has turned to exasperation and hostility. However, this may be an over-reading of the Trinamul Congress’ vulnerability.
The Trinamul Congress has undoubtedly lost a great deal of the urban support that sustained it in the years when the Left stranglehold over West Bengal was total. In Basirhat Dakshin, for example, the BJP was able to prevail almost solely on the strength of the resounding support it received from the urban and semi-urban clusters; its support in the rural areas was next to nothing.
However, even in the urban areas, the Trinamul Congress has been able to marginally offset its loss of support from Hindi-speaking migrants, poor Bengali Hindus and the middle class bhadralok by eating into the Congress’ Muslim vote.
In Ward 62, a totally Muslim-dominated part of the Chowringhee constituency, the Trinamul Congress vote rose from 6,060 in May 2014 to 10,040 in the byelection. At the same time, the Congress vote fell from 10,388 in May 2014 to 3,724. And despite fielding a Muslim candidate, the CPM vote was static: 1,200 in May 2014 and 1,195 in September.
If the broad trends seen in the byelections persist, we are likely to see the Trinamul Congress replicating the pattern of the Left Front: winning in rural areas and conceding space to the BJP in urban and semi-urban Bengal.
Yet, for the BJP to emerge as a potent Opposition, it needs to shore up its organisational base in the urban areas in time for the elections to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and other municipalities in May 2015. At present, the BJP is disproportionately dependant on the self-motivation of its passive support base.
Anecdotal evidence suggest that the BJP would have given the Trinamul Congress a run for its money if it had a candidate with local clout (as the Congress did) and was able to motivate its voters into actually turning up to vote.
Like in May 2014, the BJP is much too reliant on spontaneity. It needs a semblance of organisational presence to take on a Trinamul Congress that has struck deep roots in every mohulla and is incredibly well-funded.
Ms Banerjee has one more card up her sleeve. The byelections have demonstrated that while the Congress is in terminal decline, it still has a nuisance value in many areas.
By suddenly waking up to the dangers posed by “communal forces”, Ms Banerjee may suddenly discover the virtues of reingratiating herself with the Congress, more so given the extent of panic in the Trinamul Congress as the Saradha investigations inches its way to the top of the political pile.
There is a churning happening in West Bengal that needs to be very carefully monitored in the coming days.
The writer is a senior journalist
