West Bengal elections are different from other states for five reasons

The amount of political violence seen in West Bengal before, during or after the polls is not comparable to the situation in any other state in the country.

The party that loses the polls has to spend months out of their homes in fear of their supporters in the villages – a scenario not at all rare in the state.

There are also signs during the Left Front era, where even after winning that front, the worker supporters of the partner party Forward Bloc had to be left without their homes – due to the persecution of the front’s major partner, the CPIM. This incident took place in Arambagh area of ​​Hooghly district.

Law and order situation does not have a good reputation, even in a state like Uttar Pradesh, but such things do not happen very often.

National level statistics also show that West Bengal has the highest number of casualties in election-related political attacks in the entire country.

A major reason behind this is that West Bengal is a state – where the amount of agricultural land is low, but the population is very high. As usual, the struggle of more people over the possession of less land creates a fertile ground for violence.

Moreover, whoever is in the ruling party prefers to operate with a ‘winner takes all’ group philosophy at all levels of the state – and the influence of the ruling parties or their organizations becomes pervasive in daily life in the villages and towns.

Be it in the rural areas of West Bengal or in Kolkata and the suburbs – West Bengalis have become increasingly accustomed to this reality.

As a result, despite Calcutta’s identity as a city of educated, gentry, intellectuals or intellectuals, political violence is a daily experience in rural West Bengal.

Starting from the Tevaga movement in undivided Bengal in the 40s, the murders of Morichjhampi, Nanur, Chhoto Angaria or Bogtui in the state later took place in that vein.

As usual, this violence multiplies during any election – presumably this time will be no exception.

The National Election Commission in India has recently started revising the electoral rolls in various states through the process of ‘Special Intensive Revision’ or SIR.

This process has been or is being done in various states of the country including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala – but the amount of controversies, disputes, lawsuits, protests and allegations of utter disorganization surrounding the SIR in West Bengal is unprecedented.

Even the Supreme Court has commented on their observation that there is no mess anywhere else – but they do not understand why there is so much trouble with SIR only in West Bengal.

Perhaps the answer to this question lies in the ‘border dynamics’ of the bordering state of West Bengal and the periodic ‘inflow’ of millions of people over the years to settle in the state.

In fact, since the partition of the country in 1947, a continuous flow of refugees has entered West Bengal. Later the issue of encroachment also became a very big issue in state politics.

Besides, since Calcutta has always been the largest city in East and North-East India, many people from the surrounding states came to settle permanently in this city-adjacent industrial area in search of livelihood.

Since they are not ‘Bhoomiputras’ of the state, they also have to fight the struggle to acquire civil rights as residents of this state from the very first day after they set foot there.

Absenteeism is therefore a question of passion and rights for a large section of the population of West Bengal, which they are not ready to compromise at any cost. And for very good reason.

It is not difficult to understand the reason why West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has raised the SIR issue all the way to Delhi or is personally questioning it in the Supreme Court, holding repeated dharnas on ‘victims’ and making it the main tool of her election campaign.

And since the Election Commission has failed step by step to carry out the entire process properly, the anger of the people has increased manifold.

As a result, this SIR-related controversy has made West Bengal’s polls quite different this time compared to Kerala or Tamil Nadu.

There is no doubt that Mamata Banerjee is the strongest opponent of BJP among the leaders of regional parties in India.

Apart from the All India Congress, the most important opposition party at the national level is the Trinamool Congress.

Mamata Banerjee has been in parliamentary democracy for more than forty years, having served as an MP, Union Minister or Chief Minister continuously since she first entered Parliament from the Jadavpur constituency in 1984.

He became the Chief Minister of West Bengal in 2011, ending 34 years of continuous leftist rule, which was a watershed moment in Indian politics as a whole.

He is now so far ahead of India’s other opposition leaders in political importance that his name is frequently discussed as a possible prime minister should a non-BJP government form at the Centre.

Maharashtra leader Sharad Pawar is dead, MK Stalin has very little experience in Tamil Nadu, former Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal or Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav are no match – so Mamata Banerjee is now the main face of the anti-Congress camp.

As Mamata Banerjee herself is in the fray to become the chief minister for the fourth consecutive term in West Bengal, her name has given a different dimension to the polls in the state.

His charisma and unequivocal influence in the state politics is so much that BJP has not been able to present any alternative face to him in West Bengal despite trying for many years.

A West Bengal BJP leader may have beaten him to an assembly seat for once – but that’s it.

There are no signs that Mamata Banerjee’s personal popularity has waned, even as accusations of administrative failure and financial corruption have surfaced against the Trinamool Congress government.

As a result, since he is the chief ministerial candidate for the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal in this election as well, it has given a different dimension to the state election.

They have formed governments in many states of India for the first time since the BJP formed a single government at the center in 2014 with absolute majority for the first time.

This list includes many states like Assam or Tripura in the northeast, Bihar and Odisha in eastern India, or Haryana in northern India.

Even in the south they are making vigorous efforts to create land under their feet in states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala or Telangana.

But the state where the BJP’s political campaign has repeatedly stumbled is West Bengal.

In the 2021 elections, BJP leader Amit Shah had raised the slogan of crossing two hundred seats in the state, but the BJP’s number of seats eventually stopped at 77, forming the third Trilamool Congress government with a huge majority.

But if you talk to the old leaders of BJP, you can understand how big a dream it is for them to seize power in West Bengal.

A major reason for this is that the early version of the BJP, the Jana Sangh or earlier the Hindu Mahasabha, was headed by Shyamaprasad Mukherjee – himself a native of Calcutta.

The BJP honors Shyamaprasad Mukhopadhyay and Pandit Deendyal Upadhyay as their ‘founders’ – and the fact that the BJP is yet to come to power in the home state of one of the party’s founders is embarrassing and distressing to senior party leaders.

This is why BJP leaders have dismissed all allegations of secret ties or so-called ‘setting’ with the Trinamool and have always said that Narendra Modi wants to see the party in power in West Bengal during his prime ministership.

But the question of whether the BJP will be able to capture their ‘last frontier’ at last, has created a different curiosity around the 2026 West Bengal elections – a question that is not poll-oriented and revolves around the three states.

If we look at the electoral history of West Bengal, it will be seen that the people of that state have repeatedly given a chance to a party before removing it from power, putting their trust in the same party for years.

And when there has been a change of power in the state, it has been over many years.

After partition in 1947, West Bengal was under Congress rule for nearly three decades – although two weak united fronts held sway in the state for a couple of years.

After the Emergency in 1977, the Left Front government came to power for the first time.

After that, the Left Front ruled the state for 34 consecutive years under the leadership of Jyoti Basu and Buddhadev Bhattacharya – these two successive Chief Ministers.

The Trinamool Congress – which has already been in power for 15 consecutive years – is contesting this election hoping to get another five-year mandate after ending that left-wing regime in 2011.

But the situation is not comparable in many other states of India – as the change of power is very regular in most states.

A great example is Kerala, where the Left and the Congress have almost alternated in power over the years. The exact same thing happened in Tamil Nadu with parties like DMK and AIADMK.

In the states of the Hindi heartland or Gobla where the BJP and the Congress are in direct competition – there have been frequent, if not exact, shifts in power.

West Bengal is a rare exception here – because the people of this state have trusted a party for years before it was ousted from power – and once a ruling party was ousted, they were not allowed anywhere near the State Secretariat Writers’ Building (or now Navanna).

The latter part of the statement is true for both the Congress and the Communist Party.

Now whether the continuous rule of Trinamool Congress stops at 15 years – or they get a chance to play a longer innings like the previous ruling parties, that too has definitely given a different dimension to this election in West Bengal!