Bengal: BJP eyes assembly election after spirited performance in Lok Sabha polls

NEW DELHI: Having tasted its biggest-ever victory in

West Bengal

, the party will now push for ousting chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress government from the state. The BJP’s tally has leaped from two

Lok Sabha

seats to 18.


The state is slated to go in for assembly polls in 2021. “40 TMC MLAs are already in talks with BJP to cross over,” PM Modia had said during campaigning, indicating what could be in store for the coming days in the TMC

bastion

that was breached on Thursday.

The Left parties have disappeared from Bengal’s political canvass in this Lok Sabha polls. Its traditional vote share has drifted to the BJP kitty, which is all set to spearhead the anti-incumbency against the ruling regime. The CPM-led Left workers have helped BJP with election process to weaken the TMC rule, after the party was marginalized in the last panchayat polls in the state, it is learnt. It suited the Left cadres to take help from BJP to hit out against Banerjee, while that came in handy for BJP managers in a state where it lacks cadres and election machinery.

Given that Congress has been cornered in its limited territory in north and central Bengal, for long years now. It will be difficult for the party to combat a expanding BJP in the state, after being beaten back at the national level.

BJP’s long-term plan of using TMC to oust the well-entrenched Left rule in Bengal and to create space for the right wing party to grow seems to have worked finally. The BJP is now targeting the state which had remained out of bounds for it, even as the founder of Jan Sangh, BJP’s earlier avatar, Shyamaprasad Mookerjee hailed from there.