Mamata: Beyond 2021 - 'Why BJP lost the plot' in Bengal | Book excerpt
India Today
Journalist Jayanta Ghoshal lists ten reasons why the BJP, with an elaborate campaign plan and heavyweight leaders addressing rallies, was defeated by the Trinamool Congress in Bengal in 2021.
During his campaign in West Bengal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: 'Didi, Bengal is lost, welcome to Varanasi.' Home Minister Amit Shah said: 'Ab ki baar, do sau paar (This time around, over 200).' BJP campaigners repeatedly said: 'Real poriborton (real change) will be seen in Nabanno.'
In reality, it turned out to be just the opposite.
What West Bengal saw was not poriborton but protyarborton.
Not transformation but renewal. The Mamata Banerjee government romped back to power in the state.Still, any analysis of the election results in West Bengal must consider the fact that while it is true that the BJP was defeated soundly and couldn't seize the state, it is also true that it increased its tally of seats from three to seventy-seven (though subsequent defections are eating into this figure). The BJP was already the main opposition party before the elections and it will return with renewed energy; it will engage afresh in anti-Mamata politics.
But the real question is: why did the BJP lose?
Consider the reasons. First, the Bengali card, the Bengali identity, became a big factor in the elections and Mamata Banerjee played it cleverly by dubbing Narendra Modi and Amit Shah 'outsiders'. Many people considered this an open display of parochial politics, pitting Bengalis against non-Bengalis. But Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool clarified repeatedly that this was not the right way of framing it, that the BJP leaders were 'trying to break [the] spine of Bengali culture through distorted facts.'
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