Lok Sabha Polls 2024: Prestige battle between BJP & TMC in three seats of Dooars region in West Bengal

Cooch Behar/Alipurduar: On the eve of the first phase of Lok Sabha polls, the big question on everyone’s mind is whether Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress will be able to make inroads in the Dooars region of West Bengal that has turned into a BJP stronghold in the last five years.

The overtly visible saffron signs are there everywhere across Cooch Behar, Alipurduars and Jalpaiguri constituencies with BJP culminating its campaigning with massive Ram Navami programmes in Siliguri and Cooch Behar towns.

But what lies beneath the surface may play a key role in determining the fates of the three BJP candidates when people vote on Friday.

For one, there are discontentments on sitting MPs like Nisith Pramanik and John Barla on their performance.

While BJP repeated Pramanik -- a young Rajbanshi leader with a criminal background -- at Cooch Behar, it declined a ticket to Barla and fielded Madarihat MLA Manoj Tigga, who has a better public image, as Alipurduars candidate.

In addition, there is strong internal turbulence within the local units, which may explain why it took the party’s central leadership three weeks to announce retaining the sitting Jalpaiguri MP Jayanta Roy as its choice for the 2024 polls, even though Roy enjoys wide acceptability and has a clean image.

Such dissidence may also be the reason behind complete absence of a prominent Rajbanshi leader and Rajya Sabha MP Nagendra Ray – popularly known as Anant Maharaj – in the campaigning in these constituencies where Rajbanshi vote is the deciding factor.

Out of 21 assembly constituencies, BJP captured 15 in 2021 assembly polls while TMC got 6

On the other hand, what bolsters TMC’s chances is the strong focus that Mamata and her principal lieutenant Abhishek Banerjee has given to north Bengal this time with a dogged determination to break into the saffron vote bank.

Also the party did well in the last panchayat polls amidst the allegations of violence and rigging.

TMC won four out the eight seats of north Bengal in 2014 Parliamentary election but could not open its account five years later when BJP, riding on the Modi wave, pocketed seven seats with the remaining one going to Congress. This time Mamata has gone all out to wrest a few. Moreover, there is no Modi wave.

Modi did three public rallies while Mamata addressed four rallies and one road show

In her rallies, the TMC supremo repeatedly narrated the welfare schemes her government brought for people, particularly for the Rajbanshi community. Since a storm ravaged Jalpaiguri on April 2, the Chief Minister has spent nearly 50 per cent of her time in north Bengal, criss-crossing the three constituencies.

“What have I not done for north Bengal? But we don’t get the votes, even though there are crowds in the rallies,” an exasperated Mamata said at a rally.

But multiple corruption charges and scams have tainted the Trinamool Congress’s image in people’s mind. “Trinamool government has done some work, but they take bribes at every level,” complained Ashok Roy, a resident of Khapaidanga village near Cooch Behar town.

Another critical factor will be conversion of the traditional Left vote. The Left candidates in all the three constituencies ended at the second spot in the 2014 Parliamentary polls bagging nearly 30 per cent of the votes. Five years later, the Left vote shifted to BJP triggering the landslide victory for the saffron party.

“Even if a fraction of that Left vote now comes back to a non-BJP party, the equations will change,” noted a local political observer.