Why did TMC win in West Bengal?
May 20, 2016
- See more at:
http://www.elections.in/blog/why-did-tmc-win-in-west-bengal/#sthash.aDh2kCUD.dpuf
Post verdict, Didi summed it all
aptly. “If a party loses its ideology, it loses everything. CPI(M)-Congress
have lost everything,” said the Trinamool Congress (TMC) boss. But was that so?
After all even Mamata Banerjee is known to switch affiliations – from centrist
Congress to right wing National Democratic Alliance and so on! In 2011, she was
the first to exploit the Congress’s support to oust the Left from power in West
Bengal. This time she termed the Congress as a “creeper…” But isn’t she a
hard bargainer who loves to put her finger in every pie?
Mamata has emerged stronger than the
last time
Still to the uninitiated, Mamata has
emerged stronger than the last time after winning more seats than what it had
won in 2011 in West Bengal. In the process, she has not just decimated the Left
but also subdued its uncomfortable ally, the Congress.
As in Bihar last year where it was a
junior alliance partner of the Janata Dal (United)-Rashtriya Janata Dal-led
Grand Alliance, the Congress had thought of a piggy back ride to power by
entering into a pact with the Left Front. As it is, the Left Front now sees
Red, getting lesser seats than what it had managed last time in the state!
The question thus arises is whether
the dilution of ideology alone cost Left dearly this election in
socially/ideologically conscious Bengal or was it just that the voters were
still yet to forget its “misrule” before Mamata’s TMC had emerged as an
alternative in 2011? It though goes beyond dispute that the Left-Congress pact
– a first in Bengal politics – was nothing but sheer political opportunism,
devoid of any ideology.
It did discredit the Left much as
the voters ignored corruption issues involving TMC leaders, be it the Narada
sting where a few TMC member of Parliaments were shown on camera accepting cash
or the Saradha scam where the ruling party was allegedly involved. Although the
TMC lost the Kolkata seat this time, the recent collapse of under-construction
flyover outside the city, in which many were killed, had no impact on the
party’s electoral fortunes as it conveniently shifted the blame on the CPI-M
whose government had launched the project.
The TMC victory proves that voters
were more willing to buy Mamata’s development plank than that of the Left. Yet
statistics suggest that the anti-incumbency factor worked in the state only
twice in the last 39 years – in 1977 and then in 2011 and this implies that the
voters of West Bengal are more willing to give the ruling party more than one
chance. Still, this was the fourth consecutive time that the TMC thrashed the
Left in elections in the state starting with the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and
the first time that a party won while contesting alone.
The verdict endorses Mamta’s claims
of restoring peace and development in the Naxal hit regions. Besides, winning
more seats than before also meant that the Left-Congress alliance could not win
over the Muslims as they would have been hoping to amidst reports that Mamata
had lost her grip on the Muslim voters because of her government’s apathy
towards their agrarian crisis and the absence of minimum support price for
their produce.
Does her resounding victory mean that her government remains “government of common people … (which) will never do anything which could become a burden on people”. After all this too was her poll plank to woo the voters!
Does her resounding victory mean that her government remains “government of common people … (which) will never do anything which could become a burden on people”. After all this too was her poll plank to woo the voters!
- See more at:
http://www.elections.in/blog/why-did-tmc-win-in-west-bengal/#sthash.aDh2kCUD.dpuf
Comments
Post a Comment