NRC boomerangs on BJP, Mamata set for 3-0 bypoll sweep

BJP led in Kaliaganj, Kharagpur in the LS polls, but lost the bypolls 6 months later

Mamata Banerjee salil West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee | Salil Bera

The BJP has lost two of its bastions in West Bengal to the ruling Trinamool Congress as results of the latest bypolls came on Thursday. The saffron party is all set to lose in a third seat also.

The defeat is solely seen as a reaction to the fear psychosis the BJP had created in the name of the NRC in West Bengal.

Kaliaganj, a border Assembly constituency, which gave the BJP a lead of 57,000 votes in the Lok Sabha election, voted in favour of the TMC candidate, who won by around 23,00 votes. Though the margin is slender, it’s significant because a border constituency refused to vote in favour of the BJP, unlike it did just six months back. Kamal Chandra Sarkar, the BJP candidate, lost to Tapan Sinha in Kaliaganj.

In Karimpur, where the Assembly bypoll was necessitated because the seat was vacated after the Lok Sabha polls by eventual TMC MP Mahua Maitra, the BJP is facing defeat by a huge margin at the hands of TMC candidate Bimalendu Sinha who is leading by more than 25,000 votes. Karimpur is also a border constituency with a majority of the voters being Muslims.

The BJP, however, was never a force in Karimpur and did not expect many votes there. But it faced a major blow in Kharagpur, the constituency vacated by state BJP chief and MP Dilip Ghosh. Kharagpur has gone to the Trinamool Congress.

BJP candidate P.K. Jha, a close associate of Ghosh, was routed by the TMC candidate by over 18,000 votes in Kharagpur. Matters were made worse for the BJP as a disgruntled 'rebel' from the party was also in the fray. Like in Kaliaganj, in the last Lok Sabha election, the BJP had a lead of over 40,000 votes against the TMC in Kharagpur.

Kharagpur is inhabited by an almost equal number of non-Bengalis and Bengali-speaking people. It’s a commercial hub in the rural belt and known as mini-India. The defeat is very significant, therefore.

Interestingly, both Kaliaganj and Kharagpur were won by the TMC for the first time. For the last many years, both constituencies had been won by the Congress. While Kharagpur went to the BJP very recently, the Congress MLA of Kaliaganj died recently, as a result of which a bypoll was necessitated.

A senior BJP leader told THE WEEK, “Perhaps the NRC issue did not bode well among the voters. We will have to introspect.” In fact, Sarkar conceded, “Yes, we have failed to make people understand about NRC. We will have to work hard.”

In a statement, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said, “It’s befitting reply to the BJP’s deadly politics, arrogance and campaign in favour of NRC. They scared people. They also scared every community.”

That NRC made a huge impact in the Kaliaganj bypoll may be attributed to the fact that nearly 20 per cent of the population in the constituency consists of the Rajbanshi community, which has connections to Assam. Apparently, this group feared the possibility of impact of NRC as in Assam, more than 50 per cent of those branded as non citizens are from the Hindu community.

Sources said BJP president Amit Shah sought a detailed report from Dilip Ghosh about the defeat in the bypolls. Ghosh, who had skipped the winter session of the Lok Sabha initially to campaign in bypolls, would focus on three issues—infighting in the party, price rise and possible flip-flop on corruption cases against TMC leaders.

“The party would sit for a gruelling introspection. Don’t worry, we will be back. It would have no impact in the coming days,” said one of the state-in-charges of the BJP in West Bengal.