Mamata holds on to personal aura, obfuscates corruption charges with 'beneficiary politics'

Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee ‘magic’ worked yet again for the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal even as the party romped home with 29 of the 42 parliamentary constituencies in the state, reducing the BJP to 12, six seats less than its previous count, and restricting the saffron camp to less than 39 per cent votes.

Although Banerjee attributed the win to the people of the state and called the results “people’s rejection of those opposed to Bengal”, there’s little doubt that the leader’s political charisma, her street-fighter image and feisty opposition to the BJP worked wonders behind the retention of her followers’ trust that allowed her to nearly replicate the TMC’s 2021 state election performance despite the palpable anti-incumbency.

What seems to have worked in Banerjee’s favour, besides the personal popularity she has more or less managed to retain, is the ‘beneficiary politics’ she actively practised during her tenure in state power which clearly obfuscated the anti-incumbency arising out of large-scale allegations of corruption and coercive management of opposition voices.

Beneficiaries of 'Lakshmir Bhandar' and 'Kanyashree' projects among many others, who doubled up as voters in the state, seem to have given Banerjee a thumbs up.

It seemed they ignored the fact that the TMC supremo remains riddled with her multiple leaders in jail, central investigative agencies breathing on the necks of several others including her nephew Abhishek Banerjee and embargoes on Central funds that have allegedly derailed the state’s welfare schemes.

What Banerjee, with the support from her heir-apparent Abhishek, managed to attain through her untiring poll campaigns in Bengal, which were well over a hundred in the last three months, was to take that message across to people in her characteristic style and demeanour.

In the process, she overtly and simultaneously played the victim card and promoted her own variety of sub-nationalism by honing her image as a protector of people from those “outsiders” to the state. In more ways than one, 2024 was a redux of 2021 for Banerjee with identical approaches to the polls and similar outcomes.

Ever since the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, where the Trinamool Congress jumped to bagging 19 seats in Bengal from its previous tally of just one seat, for all practical purposes elections in the state have been fought around the aura and popularity of Mamata Banerjee.

While the 2014 parliamentary polls marked the high point of Banerjee’s political career where she wrested 34 out of the 42 Lok Sabha segments of the state, she would perhaps be best remembered for successfully resisting the BJP juggernaut in the 2021 state polls, an election where the saffron camp threw its full weight in a never-before-seen campaign intensity and major defections from the TMC camp to snatch at least 200 seats in the state.

Led by Banerjee’s relentless campaigns, a significant part of which was conducted within the confines of a wheelchair for the reported injury she sustained during her campaign in Nandigram, and poll strategies devised by the party’s poll-advising agency, the TMC finished with 215 seats, restricting the BJP to 77. Although the BJP managed to increase its seat share manifold from its previous tally of only three seats and established itself as virtually the only opposition on the floor of the assembly, Banerjee and Abhishek were credited with dealing a shocking blow to BJP’s political aspirations in the state.

But Banerjee has hardly had a moment of peace ever since. While her party has remained mired by allegations of large-scale corruption cutting across sectors – from recruitments in schools and municipal bodies to ration distribution, coal and cattle smuggling – her top leaders, indicted by the courts in multiple scams, were arrested and thrown in jail.

That apart and much to Banerjee’s sustained chagrin, who alleged BJP’s repeated engagement in “political vendetta”, central investigating agencies have conducted a vast number of raids at residences, offices and premises linked to senior Trinamool Congress leaders and questioned them in connection to these alleged irregularities.

But it’s the scanner of the agencies and the courts on Banerjee’s nephew and the party’s perceived second-in-command Abhishek and his family members that perhaps rattled the TMC chief more than the others.

Ironically, Banerjee’s political fortunes seemed to turn a full circle in Sandeshkhali in January this year, coming back to haunt the leader on the same issue of forcible land grab of farmers which catapulted her to state power a decade and a half ago when she cornered the erstwhile Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee-government for the state’s alleged forceful land acquisitions for setting up industry in Singur and Nandigram.

The non-descript corner of the Sunderbans delta grabbed national attention after an unprecedented attack, allegedly by followers of local TMC strongman Shajahan Sheikh on a team of ED officials probing the ration distribution scam, led to locals alleging forcible land grab and sexual assault on women against Sheikh and his men.

The subsequent arrest of Shajahan and his cohorts quickly changed the political dynamic of the Basirhat parliamentary constituency with the BJP nominating Rekha Patra, an alleged Sandeshkhali victim-turned-agitator, to take on the might of the Trinamool Congress which has been dominating the seat since 2009.

But for Mamata Banerjee, Sandeshkhali remained a sore point not just because of the foothold the saffron party managed to gain in the area but perhaps more because it dented her image as a protector of farmers against land sharks who enjoy the patronage of the ruling dispensation.

By comprehensively winning the Basirhat seat, which encapsulates Sandeshkhali, Banerjee is firmly positioned to claim vindication of her stand that the developments in the delta were no more than an aberration in the larger scheme of politics in Bengal.