TMC’s rejig to counter anti-incumbency
The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) rolled out its candidate list for the upcoming polls, slated for April 23 and 29, dropping around 74 sitting MLAs in a significant overhaul and reshuffling 15 others across constituencies. The move is seen as an effort to counter anti-incumbency as Mamata Banerjee seeks a fourth term.
It draws parallels with the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s 2006 candidate rejig, when a large number of MLAs, including ministers, were dropped to fight anti-incumbency. The outcome: The Left Front came back for a seventh time with a landslide victory — securing a vote share of over 50 per cent.
Whether the TMC’s strategy will pay off or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will convert anti-incumbency into votes remains to be seen.
Political analyst Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury told Business Standard: “Even as TMC has introduced new faces, it has retained several controversial incumbents. It could have fielded more fresh candidates.”
Analysts believe the mix of old and new faces in the 291-candidate list reflects the influence of both Mamata and her nephew, TMC’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.
Around 60 per cent of the MLAs have been retained. In terms of age profile, about 13 per cent of candidates are in the age bracket of 31-40 years, 31 per cent in the 41-50 group, and 32 per cent in the 51–60 range.
Of the 294 seats, three will be contested by ally Anit Thapa-led Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha in Darjeeling hills. BJP, TMC’s principal challenger, has announced 255 candidates so far — about a fourth are below the 40-year age bracket. The CPI(M) has also fielded many of its youth leaders.
As the campaign gathers momentum, one constituency has already taken centre stage: Bhabanipur.
Spotlight on Bhabanipur
The constituency is set to witness a replay of 2021, with Mamata taking on her bête noire Suvendu Adhikari once again — the contest shifting from Nandigram.
In the last Assembly elections, even as Mamata led the party to a landslide victory, she lost Nandigram to Adhikari by a narrow margin of 1,956 votes. Adhikari, who is also contesting from Nandigram this time, is now looking to repeat that performance and widen the gap in Bhabanipur. The Leader of the Opposition has already hit the ground running in the constituency, declaring that he would win by a margin of 25,000 votes.
In 2021, Mamata won Bhabanipur by a margin of more than 58,000 votes in a bypoll to retain her chief ministership. It’s a cosmopolitan constituency with Marwaris, Gujaratis, Punjabis and other non-Bengalis accounting for more than 40 per cent of the population. As Mamata had said after winning the seat in 2021, around 46 per cent of the people in the constituency are non-Bengalis and “they have all voted for me”.
But will the recently-concluded special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls queer the pitch? More than 47,000 names have been struck off and around 14,000 have been kept under adjudication in the exercise.
If the political discourse in the 2021 elections was shaped by the NRC, the CAA and “cut money”, this time it’s SIR that is in focus — a theme as polarising as religion.
The SIR has emerged as a key factor in this Assembly election, according to political analyst Biswanath Chakraborty. “The BJP is aiming to trim the voter rolls, while the TMC is focused on retaining its voter base,” he said.
According to Basu Ray Chaudhury, the polarisation this time is not just along Hindutva lines, but also over how SIR has been implemented — compared to 2002, it has been a rushed process, triggering deletions, harassment, and a deeper divide.
Mohammed Salim, CPI(M) West Bengal State Secretary, said both TMC and BJP sought to reinforce a divisive and binary contest around SIR. “But secular democratic forces, led by the Left, pushed back — our response centres on protecting voters’ rights,” he said.
The electorate list published after the SIR on February 28 saw the voter base in Bengal trimmed by about 8 per cent to 70.4 million, with more than 6 million names placed “under adjudication”. Supplementary lists after adjudication will be published, and the first is likely on March 23.
At an Eid gathering on Saturday, Mamata said she would stand with citizens in their fight to protect their right to vote. But SIR is not her only plank — welfare schemes remain central to her campaign.
Mamata’s trump card?
The anti-incumbency this time is three times stronger, according to Salim. “Earlier, it was directed at the government, not the Chief Minister; now, it extends to both the administration and to the CM,” he said.
Senior BJP leader Dilip Ghosh said the government has fallen short on multiple fronts — from job creation to health and education. “We will secure the numbers needed to form the government,” he asserted.
Ghosh’s confidence is rooted in the BJP’s steady rise in Bengal over the past decade. The saffron party won 77 seats in 2021 with a 38 per cent vote share — a sharp rise from just three seats and 10.3 per cent in 2016. In 2011, it had secured a 4.1 per cent vote share and failed to win a single seat.
Whether it can better its last performance will be known on May 4. In 2021, the TMC won 215 seats with a vote share of 48.59 per cent.
According to Basu Ray Chaudhury, however, the anti-incumbency against the TMC is far more pronounced among the urban elite: “The underclass, the beneficiaries of welfare schemes, tend to remain loyal to the party.”
But the battle has just begun and the outcome of SIR could test many assumptions.
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