Bengal Bypolls: BJP Ends Campaign On A High Note In Its North Bengal Stronghold

As campaigning for the high-stakes byelections to the Dhupguri Assembly constituency in North Bengal came to a frenetic end on Sunday evening, the BJP seemed to have retained advantage in the seat that it won in 2021. 

Dhupguri has been a CPI(M) bastion since 1977 when the Left Front came to power in Bengal and withstood the Trinamool wave of 2011 that put Mamata Banerjee in the Chief Minister’s seat. 

In 2011, the CPI(M)’s Mamata Roy had defeated the Trinamool’s Mina Barman by over 4,200 votes, but the Trinamool’s Mitali Roy wrested the seat from the Marxists in 2016 by a margin of nearly 20,000 votes. 

However, in the 2021 assembly elections, the BJP’s Bishnu Pada Ray defeated Trinamool’s Mitali Roy by a margin of 4,355 votes. 

The byelections have been necessitated by the death of incumbent MLA Bishnu Pada Ray in July this year. 

The stakes are high for all the parties — the BJP, the Trinamool Congress and the Congress-Left combine — in the elections being held on Tuesday (5 September). 

Rajbongshis, who fall in the Scheduled Caste (SC) category, form nearly 60 per cent of the population of Dhupguri. The Gorkhas and tea tribes —tribals brought by the British to work as labourers in tea plantations — form another 18 per cent of the electorate of Dhupguri which falls in Jalpaiguri district. 

Muslims — all migrants from Bangladesh — form about eight-10 per cent of the electorate of Dhupguri while Bengali Hindus constitute the remaining 14 per cent of the population. 

The BJP has to win Dhupguri to show that it is not losing ground fast to the Trinamool Congress. The BJP won 30 of the 54 assembly seats in North Bengal in the 2021 assembly elections. 

But the Trinamool has been keen on clawing back to its earlier pole position in the region.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been actively wooing the Rajbongshis, the tea tribes and also the Gorkhas with a number of welfare projects and doles. 

The Rajbongshis, tea tribes and Gorkhas besides Bengali Hindus who have fled persecution in Bangladesh, form the BJP’s strong support base in the region. 

But the Trinamool has, through a carrot and stick policy, managed to wean away some sections of all these groups. 

That was evident in the Dinhata assembly seat in the neighbouring district of Cooch Behar. Like many other assembly seats in Bengal, Dinhata was a Left stronghold until Udayan Guha of the Forward Bloc (a Left Front constituent) who won the seat in 2011 joined the Trinamool and won Dinhata on a Trinamool ticket in 2016. 

A saffron wave swept through North Bengal in 2019 and the BJP won all the six Lok Sabha seats — Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Raiganj, Balurghat and Malda North — in the region. 

Cooch Behar Lok Sabha MP Nisith Pramanik, who is also the Union Minister of State for Home, contested the 2021 assembly polls from Dinhata (which falls within his Lok Sabha constituency) and defeated Kamal Guha by a very narrow margin of 57 votes. 

With the BJP not being able to achieve its goal of unseating Mamata Banerjee from power in 2021, Pramanik preferred to retain his Lok Sabha seat and resigned as Dinhata MLA. 

In the bypolls held after a few months, the Trinamool’s Udayan Guha trounced BJP candidate Ashok Mandal by a huge margin of 1.64 lakh votes. 

The Trinamool held up its huge victory in Dinhata as a clear sign of its comeback in North Bengal. Since then, the BJP has lost a bit of ground in some pockets of the region because of aggressive wooing of the local population by the ruling party. 

The Trinamool had also fared well in the recent panchayat polls from Dhupguri, but the ruling party’s victory was clouded by widespread allegations of rigging and intimidation of opposition workers and supporters.

A victory for the BJP from Dhupguri is important not only to demonstrate that its North Bengal bastion remains impregnable, but also to boost the morale of its workers and supporters before the Lok Sabha elections next year. 

Similarly, the Trinamool is also keen to showcase a victory in Dhupguri as a sure sign that it has been able to beat the BJP in the latter’s North Bengal stronghold. 

The Congress-Left alliance also has also thrown its hat in the ring. A victory, or at least a respectable performance, is important for the alliance as an attestation of its recent contentions that it is displacing the BJP as the primary opposition party in the state. 

But political observers feel that the Congress-Left alliance will not be able to make much headway in Dhupguri where the primary battle is between the BJP and the Trinamool. 

The BJP, they say, enjoys an advantage in Dhupguri. The main reasons for that are:

BJP’s Choice Of Candidate

Tapasi Roy has been associated with the saffron party for a number of years and is a dedicated party worker who is also a good orator. 

Former Trinamool MLA Joining The BJP

Mitali Roy, who had won Dhupguri on a Trinamool ticket in 2016, crossed over to the BJP along with a couple of hundred of her followers Sunday (3 September). 

Mitali Roy, who was associated with the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO), enjoys the support of a wide cross-section of Rajbongshis. 

She joined the BJP because she was denied a ticket (to contest from Dhupguri) this time by the Trinamool, which preferred to field Nirmal Chandra Roy, a professor of history at Dhupguri Girls’ College. 

Mitali Roy joined the BJP soon after attending a campaign rally in which top Trinamool leaders were present. Her departure from the Trinamool has served a blow to the ruling party on the eve of the byelections. 

BJP Has Gained Goodwill In Recent Months

The BJP has buttressed its support base within the Rajbongshi community recently by nominating prominent community leader Ananta Roy ‘Maharaj’ to the Rajya Sabha in July this year.

Ananta ‘Maharaj’, as he is popularly known, commands tremendous support and respect within his community and has been demanding the formation of a separate Kamtapur state. 

The poll rallies he has addressed to canvass support for BJP candidate Tapasi Roy have seen massive turnouts. 

Also, the award of Padma Shri to a widely-respected educationist, Dharma Narayan Barman, of the Rajbongshi community, by the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre has also gone down very well with the community. Barman has been fighting for recognition for the Rajbongshi language for many decades. 

Anti-Incumbency Against Trinamool

Widespread corruption by Trinamool functionaries, especially at the panchayat levels, has tarnished the image of the party. The involvement of top leaders of the party in many scams that have surfaced in recent months have also generated considerable ill-will against the party. 

The intimidation of and attacks on opposition (mainly BJP) workers and supporters by the Trinamool during the recent panchayat polls has also alienated large sections of the electorate.

Acute unemployment, as well as the Trinamool’s patronage of illegal immigration of Muslims from Bangladesh, has become a sore point among the Rajbongshis, Gorkhas, tea tribes and Bengali Hindus of the region. 

Division Of Muslim Votes

The recent panchayat polls have shown that Muslims in many parts of the state are veering away from the Trinamool and returning to the CPI(M). 

This seems to be the case in Dhupguri too. The CPI(M), backed by the Congress, has fielded a folk singer, Ishwar Chandra Roy, who is popular among Muslims. 

Though the Trinamool has patronised Dhupguri’s Muslims, all of them recent immigrants or descendants of immigrants from Bangladesh, it cannot take the support of this community for granted any more. 

That’s because widespread unemployment and economic distress, as well as the siphoning off of funds meant for development and various welfare schemes by Trinamool functionaries has affected and angered Muslims also. 

Political observers say that the CPI(M) will get a fair chunk of Muslim votes and that will affect the Trinamool’s prospects. 

The Trinamool, desperate for a victory, attempted to turn the tables on the BJP and steal a lead by announcing that Dhupguri, which is now a community development block, will be upgraded to a sub-division. 

Trinamool general secretary Abhishek Banerjee announced this at an election rally in Dhupguri that the block will be upgraded to a sub-division by the end of this year if the Trinamool wins the seat. 

But that, say many, has failed to cut much ice because the Trinamool has been ignoring this long-standing demand of the people of Dhupguri. The last-minute announcement by Abhishek Banerjee has come across as lacking in sincerity and a desperate measure to solicit support for the party. 

Given all these factors, the BJP is hopeful of a victory from Dhupguri. But it lacks the Trinamool’s organisational muscle, and this can make a crucial difference on the day of polling (Tuesday).