Out of the box mandate

As the day rolled towards the evening, it became apparent that the BJP was poised for a thumping, probably two-thirds, majority in West Bengal assembly polls. At the time of writing, the party set to bag 200+ seat out of 293, election to Falta seat being countermanded and repoll scheduled on 21 May.

BJP’s tally in West Bengal thus went up from 77 seats it had won in 2021 with 38.1 per cent votes. This time, a positive swing of seven percent helped the party come to power.

A swing to the magnitude of five to seven per cent usually comes with precursor signals — snide outpouring of dissatisfaction in private conversations, a disruptor group (in Tamil Nadu) like Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) led by actor-turned-politician Vijay.

Something was unusual about this swing — it came very silently. Journalists with decades of experience in covering elections did not see it come, till it actually came. Neither did leaders of TMC, or for that matter, the BJP who kept talking about a tally of around 155 or less and then “managing” the rest. In fact, Amit Shah was the only person who could see it clearly and proclaimed that his party will win 200 seats.

Going by conventional analysis, the impact of disruptors like Humayun Kabir or Naushad Siddiqui, who wanted to split Trinamool’s  Muslim votes, would be limited, reasoned political observers. Some argued that non-consolidation of Muslim votes went against the TMC.

But that would imply the campaign by Suvendu Adhikar, which was mounted on Hindu-Muslim binary, did not work. Did the women — the other constituency of Mamata Banerjee — desert her? Again, in the run up to the election, there was no sign that Bengal’s women were spurning their Didi. In fact, some BJP leaders even complained that about SIR pushing in the background genuine anti-incumbency issues like governance failure, corruption, syndicates.

Non-payment of DA (direct allowances) to state government employees was such an issue. “But that issue impacted only two percent of voters, not sufficient to explain a seven percent swing,” said a social activist on condition of anonymity.

“On the night of 3 May, I sent a text to a BJP leader saying ‘you must be keeping vigil at night.’ He responded that he has already had a quiet dinner and was preparing to retire.” Pointing out to the level of complacency and confidence, the activist pointed out there was massive levels of rigging and EVM tampering to manufacture BJP’s victory.

There are also anecdotes of how postal ballots were used to BJP’s advantage. Historically a bellwether for government employee sentiment, early trends in postal ballots showed a massive skew in favour of the BJP, to the tune of 5,000 votes on an average.

TMC agents reported that counting opened with postal ballots and EVM counting was deliberately delayed to highlight the leads generated in favour of the BJP in at least 70 per cent of the seats. By early afternoon, TMC agents started deserting the counting centres even before EVM counting was over, disheartened by false leads buoyed up by postal ballots. With counting tables manned by handpicked central government employees, there was little else they could do.

The CPM was accused of indulging in scientific rigging; that was before the BJP elevated it to an art form. The wave against TMC came out of the box — no wonder it was not visible on the ground.

(Sourabh Sen is a Kolkata-based independent writer and commentator on politics, human rights and foreign affairs)