Despite the majority of pollsters clearly suggesting a clear victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal, still most of the media houses have preferred to play safe, suggesting just “an edge” for the saffron party. Ground reports indicate that there is a mood for change even in the strongholds of the ruling Trinamool Congress that has been in power for 15 uninterrupted years. So much so Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is faced with a tough challenge in her own constituency of Bhabanipur.
Uninterrupted power and that too without any checks and curbs had obviously given rise to too much of hubris that was reflected the worst by its leaders like Derek O’brien, who scornfully addresses Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “Narendra”, the trio of Mahua Moitra, Sagarika Ghose and Sayoni Ghosh along with Kalyan Bannerjee and uncouth spokesperson Riju Dutta, all of whom still believe that the TMC is invincible. Nobody is.
While the actual results will be out on May 4, the resentment and anger against the government, particularly the TMC cadres, was visible everywhere. So much so, leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had to say that there was no democracy in Bengal but a reign of terror of the TMC. This was after one of the Congress workers was hacked to death allegedly by the TMC goons. Otherwise, the Congress, particularly Gandhi, would avoid direct criticism of the TMC and Mamata Banerjee.
The Opposition criticism against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar notwithstanding, he deserves full applause for ensuring a “bloodless” election. After a long time, there was no death in West Bengal during the elections. In the 2021 assembly elections, 60 people had lost their lives. This was possible only after the Election Commission of India deployed 2,400 companies of the Central Armed Police Forces in the state with a full mandate that there has to be “zero tolerance” to violence or intimidation of Opposition voters. No wonder, the TMC’s trio of crybabies—Mahua, Sagarika and Sayoni—were crying wolf and beating their foreheads.
When the famous encounter specialist, Ludhiana-born Uttar Pradesh IPS officer, Ajaypal Sharma, sounded a clear and categorical warning to one of the ruling party candidates, the entire ecosystem got jittery. Reaction to his no-nonsense message was expected. Intimidation of the Opposition supporters and voters at the hands of the ruling party workers and leaders had become normal in Bengal during the last few successive elections.
You don’t and you can’t handle such elements with kid gloves. They are to be dealt with like Sharma did. And this delivered the desired results. There was no fear anywhere in Bengal. The element of fear and intimidation gave an edge to the ruling party and that edge had been taken care of with heavy security arrangements.
Till 2026, it seemed to be free-for-all during the elections. That the elections are conducted by the Election Commission of India and the entire administration is under its direct control does not make much difference since the officials are obviously locals with strong preferences and prejudices.
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Till now, there was no screening of partial officials who would favour the ruling party. This time the Election Commission did thorough screening and filtration. Most of the suspect officials were replaced, including the director general of police, chief secretary and commissioner of police Kolkata.
During the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), about 92 lakh suspect names were deleted from the electoral rolls. It is possible that in such a massive exercise, there may have been some genuine voters as well whose names might have been removed, but those are just exceptions. Imagine, even if 10 per cent of the 92 lakh suspect voters who were deleted were genuine, what would be the situation on ground. They would have shaken entire Bengal.
These were obviously those voters who did not exist for multiple reasons. Making fake votes is not unusual. This is a common practice prevailing across the country. Good that the Election Commission of India has started thorough screening and filtration. No matter how much the Opposition may cry that “92 lakh voters were disenfranchised”, this was the need of the hour. It is not difficult to gauge who got these names on the electoral rolls. One important thing to mention is that about 62 lakh of these voters were Hindus and the remaining 30 lakh were Muslims. It is wrong to attribute any communal motives to the deletions.
Lawlessness was one of the most important factors that played up during the elections. Added to that was a parallel administration run by the TMC cadres, which went by its own rules of the game. This was something akin to what was done by the TMC’s predecessors, the CPM, who had become a law unto themselves. The RG Kar rape and murder case was the last proverbial straw for TMC as people felt that the TMC government failed to do justice with the victim. As if that was not enough, the way TMC cadres booed and intimidated the victim’s mother, who contested on a BJP ticket, further cleared all doubts as to which side the TMC stood.
Despite the media trying to remain discreet and guarded in presenting the exit poll findings and projections, there are strong indications that winds of change have already started blowing in Bengal.
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