Sunday Snippets
By Venkatesh Raghavan
While the turf war in Punjab has gone heavily in favour of the ruling Congress state government with their scoring placid electoral wins in all the seven municipalities including the Bharatiya Janata Party bastion of Bhatinda, West Bengal seems to be the state where the Saffron Brigade is keen to make inroads. The State – a Left citadel now controlled by the pugnacious Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), is a state which so far had consciously voted against saffron politics.
West Bengal is headed for polls along with Assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerala besides the union territory of Puducherry in the month of May 2021. The election dates are likely to be announced anytime soon and the BJP’s poll prospects depicts a story of mixed fortunes. In Bengal, the Party’s main vote-catcher and public face Amit Shah is on a drive to not only garner numbers but also engineer defections from the ruling TMC cadres. The list of turncoats switching from their loyalties to the TMC includes two cabinet ministers, namely Suvendhu Adhikari and Rajib Banerjee.
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So can one say that the current TMC government which has enjoyed two consecutive terms lasting a full decade is now headed for a neck-to-neck electoral battle with a resurgent BJP seeking to usurp power in the traditionally anti-saffron belt of the country? There are multiple reasons for the BJP viewing favourable prospects in the Bengal poll. Other than defections of TMC heavy-weights, the Saffron brigade wants to capitalise on the current CM Mamata Banerjee’s perceived poor showing on both the COVID handling and employment front. It is making all out efforts to play up Mamata’s “blatant minority appeasement”, and also hopes that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rising popularity on his purported nationalist plank besides schemes floated by the Centre for the benefit of the poorer sections, will prove good for the BJP. The prospects of other two Parties who are in the state’s electoral fray, namely the Left Front and Congress are seen to be almost marginalised, thus paving the way for the saffron Party to make in-roads.
Down South, the electoral prospects of the BJP will depend on how heavily the anti-incumbency odds get stacked against the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) besides the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) -Congress poll partners trying to showcase the BJP as a party with a northern hegemony, attempting to forcibly impose Hindi in the southern bastion. The turf war also threatened to take a new turn with popular cine-actors Rajinikanth and Kamal Hassan planning to enter politics. Rajinikanth however, decided to retract on health grounds. Kamal is still in the electoral game. It remains to be seen how this will affect the numbers game be it the AIADMK-BJP alliance or the DMK-Congress opposition front.
Whereas in West Bengal the BJP hopes to make its ripples felt for the first time, neighbouring north-eastern state of Assam has already seen the consolidation of power by the BJP. The Party is expected to retain its popular vote share in the forthcoming assembly elections. Kerala which has stayed out of the saffron clutches will continue to be a difficult proposition for the BJP with the current Left government seeming to have consolidated its vote bank in the recently held local body elections.
Overall, the ruling BJP at the Centre is slated for electoral gains in fresh grounds like West Bengal and Tamil Nadu (by virtue of its alliance with AIADMK), there is also an element of uncertainty on how the ongoing farmers’ stir will affect rural voting patterns. Farmers did show their mettle in Punjab municipality elections! Besides, there is news from the northern belt that the panchayat elections in the state of Haryana is yet to be announced and is getting delayed because of the ruling BJP’s fear of losing out on the poll front owing to the current farmer agitation.
The picture that emerges is that of the country getting painted saffron and a major power shift taking place in the so far Left and Congress dominated states. Can the BJP regain its glory of 2018 again when it could spread the power of saffron far and wide? The coming election season will tell.
Sad state of affairs. I can say one thing about our embassies that they are the most profit making factories of India. You want a document you pay through the nose. If that wasn’t enough everything is outsourced so citizens pay more for the same service.
I am glad death certificates are free because to send a dead body the rates are unimaginable. The government should realise that person has sent so much foreign exchange to India , the least they can do is to bring him home,
In the mentioned incident no political mileage hence …….. it doesn’t matter who rules