West Bengal polls: Will SIR undercut anti-incumbency against TMC

IN 2011, the left wing face, which had ruled for 34 years, dropped 81 lawmakers, including captain hicks ministers, as component part of efforts to heel counter anti-incumbency ahead of the assembly polls in West Bengal that year. It did little to prevent Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) from storming to power, on the back of Nandigram and Singur anti-land acquisition movements. The TMC and Congress won 228 of 294 seats, with chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee losing his seat.Fifteen years later, TMC has dropped 74 lawmakers, including four ministers, and changed constituencies of 15 others to counter anti-incumbency and undercut the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s campaign focus on alleged corruption. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised to take action against corruption if the BJP is voted to power.TMC leaders and analysts feel that the attention of voters, especially in villages and smaller towns, has shifted from anti-incumbency to the deletions as part of the voter roll Special Intensive Revision (SIR) to a large extent.University of Calcutta political science professor Udayan Bandopadhyay said anti-incumbency can affect even a one-term government. “The Left Front ruled from 1977 to 2011, but secured over 50% of the votes only in 1987 and 2006. Allegations of rigging and violence marred the 2001 polls.”He said Banerjee would have faced the effects of anti-incumbency had the SIR not taken place. He noted there is neither a united opposition nor a face, with the BJP, Left, and Congress contesting separately. “Since 1995-96, Banerjee emerged as the undisputed opposition face against chief minister Jyoti Basu. The current opposition, including the BJP, has no such anti-Mamata face,” Bandopadhyay said.There were around 76.6 million voters in Bengal before the SIR, which led to the removal of around 9.1 million names. The BJP has claimed that most of those deleted were “Bangladeshi infiltrators”. The TMC has maintained that genuine Muslim voters and Hindus, especially those from the Dalit Matua community, have been stripped of their right to vote.Bandopadhyay noted that a section of educated urban people support the SIR, although many of them have been deleted from the voter list. “They will definitely vote for the BJP.”Centre for Studies in Social Sciences professor Maidul Islam said the SIR is likely to consolidate Muslim voters, who accounted for 27.01% of Bengal’s population as per the 2011 census, and influence results in around 120 seats in TMC’s favour. “People are only looking at the number that has been deleted, not the fact that 3.3 million names have been added. The TMC is likely to get their support. Also, relatives of the 2.7 million voters deleted from the list will now support TMC even if they had voted for Congress or Left in the past.”He added that the BJP focused entirely on excluding the alleged “illegal” Muslim voters. “But the SIR has affected the Matuas as well, although they supported the BJP in the past elections. It is unlikely that the relative of a Matua whose name was deleted will support the BJP again,” Islam said.Islam said the April 23-29 election is anchored around the SIR. “People are no longer talking about corruption, lack of development, healthcare, and unemployment. Yet, a sizeable section of the educated Bengali middle-class, upper-middle class and rich voters, basically those not worried about documentation, is likely to support the BJP,” Islam said.He said a section of lower-middle-class Bengalis may continue to support the TMC. He added that a section of the Hindu Other Backward Class (OBC) population in villages is highly influenced by the BJP. “We have observed this for the last 10 years because the TMC government included many Muslim communities in the OBC category, a decision that has been challenged in court,” Islam said.TMC leader Jay Prakash Majumdar admitted that the government faces anti-incumbency, saying a 15-year rule is bound to do so. “But the BJP or other parties have been unable to raise this issue because the current situation revolves around the democratic rights of the people. Political awareness is very high in Bengal because it suffered the worst effects of two partitions, in 1905 and 1947. The SIR has obliterated all other issues,” Majumdar said.Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Debjit Sarkar said the SIR is of no consequence. He added that the contest is not between the BJP and the TMC but between the people and Mamata Banerjee. “The situation would not be any different if there were no SIR and no ED [Enforcement Directorate] and CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] probes. The TMC will lose because people have made up their minds to defeat it. The only alternative is the BJP,” Sarkar said.