Kolkata: Six months after the Lok Sabha elections, three assembly constituencies in West Bengal are witnessing bypolls Monday in a litmus test for Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress as well as its opponent BJP that is surging in the state.
Voting began in the three assembly constituencies, Kharagpur Sadar, Karimpur and Kaliaganj, at 8 am.
While Kharagpur Sadar and Karimpur seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested and won Lok Sabha elections, bypolls were necessitated in Kaliaganj following the death of Congress MLA Parmathanath Roy.
The results of Monday’s bypolls will determine if Mamata Banerjee’s newly-appointed poll strategist Prashant Kishore’s tactics, his ground work and counselling of TMC workers are on track, or if BJP’s polarisation strategy still has resonance in the state.
It can be argued that three of its 294 seats can hardly present a clear reflection of Bengal’s political scenario, but the results will certainly set a tone for both the parties ahead of the civic polls due next year and assembly elections in 2021.
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What Lok Sabha election results show
Kharagpur Sadar and Kaliaganj belong to Lok Sabha constituencies Kharagpur (West Midnapore) and Raiganj (North Dinajpur), respectively. BJP won both the seats in the general elections this year with almost 49 per cent and 40 per cent vote share, respectively. TMC came a distant second.
A closer look at the Lok Sabha results reveal that BJP led by over 50,000 votes in the Kaliaganj assembly segment, and by 54,000 votes in the Kharagpur Sadar assembly segment. In both the segments, TMC trailed by almost half the votes BJP polled.
Karimpur segment comes under the Murshidabad Lok Sabha constituency where a TMC candidate won with almost 42 per cent vote share. The runner-up here was the Congress candidate. BJP came third. In the Muslim dominated segment, BJP trailed by 10,000 votes.
Has TMC won back lost ground?
Monday’s bypolls will show some clarity over TMC’s claims of regaining lost ground in the state. The results will also be a statement on three major strategies that Prashant Kishor has suggested since coming in.
The first of these decisions was Banerjee’s announcement of a strict no to “cut money” (extortion) for the party, and instruction to her cadres to return to people whatever they had extorted. This was an indirect admission for the age-old extortion issue in the state.
The second was to launch a party helpline — Didi Ke Bolo — to build a connect with the people that was said to have been lost over the last couple of years. The last was to make NRC a major issue and playing it up as an exercise by the BJP to “polarise people”.
It is expected that people will cast their votes over local factors, but the issues of NRC implementation and tabling of Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in Parliament will play a crucial role across two seats — Karimpur and Kaliaganj. Both these seats fall under the border districts of Nadia and North Dinajpur.
This is also the first election in West Bengal after the Ayodhya verdict. However, the campaign pitches by senior BJP leaders made it evident that the temple issue will not have any bearing over the results.
The BJP, on its part, looks to maintain the momentum that it managed in the 2019 general elections. For TMC, it’s a fight to regain lost ground in north and western (dominated by tribal population) Bengal.
The battle is primarily between TMC and BJP, with the CPI(M) and the Congress fighting as the third force.
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