Narendra Modi’s BJP wins election in West Bengal for the first time | India
Narendra Modi’s party won a resounding election victory in West Bengal, a rare opposition stronghold, extending its unrivaled consolidation of power across the country.
The Indian prime minister’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has won parliamentary elections for the first time in West Bengal, a large and politically important state in eastern India.
For the past 15 years, the state was ruled by the key opposition party Trinamool Congress (TMC), led by its woman chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Banerjee was one of the most outspoken critics of Modi and his religious nationalist agenda during his 12 years in power.
But in an outcome that would have significant implications for India’s political landscape and deal another demoralizing blow to an already weakened opposition, the BJP looked set to win more than 205 of the 294 seats in the Bengal state assembly, a significant majority.
Modi said in a statement that the West Bengal assembly elections “will be remembered forever. People’s power prevailed and the BJP’s policy of good governance triumphed. I bow to every single person in West Bengal.”
The BJP’s long-desired victory in West Bengal further strengthens the Hindu nationalist party’s unfettered control over state and central governments in India and expands its influence in the eastern part of the country.
Since Modi became prime minister in 2014, the BJP’s dominance over politics and the scope of its political agenda, which aims to transform India into a Hindu rather than a secular country, have continued to grow; The opposition, on the other hand, is fragmented and divided due to internal conflicts.
On Monday, the BJP was also re-elected in the eastern state of Assam, giving the party power in 20 of 28 states.
The result comes after the BJP government’s highly controversial exercise of revising West Bengal’s electoral roll under the guise of “cleansing” it of illegal voters. As a result of the project called special intensive revision (SIR), more than 2.7 million voters were removed from the voting rolls. The analysis showed that Muslims and other minorities who have not traditionally supported the BJP were disproportionately targeted.
Many of them were not allowed to challenge their expulsion come election time. Critics and TMC leaders alleged that the SIR exercise was an attempt by the BJP to tilt the election in their favour, but this was denied by the government.
Rahul Verma, a fellow at the Center for Policy Research in Delhi, said the BJP’s victory in West Bengal was the result of the “seven-year project” of the party leadership and cadre.
He cited his anti-incumbency and strong dissatisfaction with the TMC and its interference in daily life as a critical factor that caused him to lose votes. He said the BJP ran a much smoother campaign than in previous years, when it was criticized as “outsiders” threatening Bengal’s cultural and linguistic identity.
“BJP had a strong and well-organized presence in West Bengal and Modi is seen as a charismatic leader,” Verma said. “This kind of outcome would also not have happened without the consolidation of Hindu votes.”
According to Verma, the result signaled that while the SIR exercise was unlikely to change the entire vote for the BJP, it nevertheless played a “marginal but still significant role in these results”.
The BJP’s victories on Monday in West Bengal, Assam and the tiny Puducherry region signaled a return to the strong political momentum the party had claimed ahead of the 2024 general elections, when it lost its absolute majority in parliament.
This was also another blow to the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress; this party faced further losses and ousted two of its allied opposition parties from power.
“Looking ahead to 2024, this is a temporary setback for the BJP,” Verma said. “They are returning to their dominant positions. With each successive defeat, more pressure is placed on the opposition, while the BJP looks more and more invincible.”
However, analysts emphasized that the BJP may still face a volatile future as the economic impact of the Iran war and the resulting energy crisis continues to escalate and the problems of mass unemployment remain unresolved.
Monday’s results also made clear that south India remains one of the opposition strongholds that the BJP has yet to successfully penetrate. In Kerala, which has a long history of electing left-wing governments, the Congress party defeated the Communist-led alliance for the first time in a decade; The BJP, on the other hand, made small gains.
In a major electoral shock in Tamil Nadu, political newcomer and former film star C Joseph Vijay and his Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam party became the first new political group to come to power in the state in almost 50 years.
