Pros and cons of Mamata Banerjee’s Nandigram showdown in opposition to Suvendu Adhikari – Politics News , ResideNews360

File picture of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. PTI

For a very long time, headlines haven’t been type to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee or her supporters. Allegations of rampant corruption, photos of BJP or RSS employees being killed and hung from bushes, the chief minister’s personal gaffes and most not too long ago a gradual stream of desertions from her Trinamool Congress to the rival camp are all which were in information.

The greatest blow was undoubtedly Suvendu Adhikari’s transfer to the BJP. Adhikari was once the preferred mass chief after Mamata within the social gathering, and his household wields large political affect within the state and significantly south Bengal.

So, when on Monday, the chief minister introduced that she would contest the forthcoming Assembly election from Nandigram, the enduring constituency that propelled her to energy in 2011 and until now Adhikari’s stronghold, it was the most effective information for her cadre and assist base in a really very long time.

This was classic Mamata Banerjee. Cornered, combative, taking the battle to the den of the enemy when her again is in opposition to the wall. This is when Banerjee has historically been probably the most harmful political power.

The BJP rapidly referred to as it an act of utmost nervousness. It mentioned combating from each her traditional seat Bhowanipore and Nandigram means she is in search of an escape, a face-saver. But is it?

The chief minister just isn’t operating away to a protected seat as Congress chief Rahul Gandhi did within the 2019 Lok Sabha elections within the face of imminent defeat in his household bastion, Amethi.

Nandigram just isn’t a protected seat. The Adhikari household had performed a lead function within the Nandigram agitation and Suvendu has been successful handsomely from there since. Soon after Mamata introduced that she could be combating from Nandigram, Suvendu publicly promised to stop politics if he didn’t defeat her by not less than 50,000 votes.

So, the chief minister just isn’t operating away to a protected seat like Rahul Gandhi did from Amethi to Wayanad. She is signalling to her supporters that she’s going to punish Adhikari’s betrayal herself. She is telling them that she just isn’t the dejected and flustered Mamata that her rivals try to venture. She is the Mamata of 2011.

Also, this choice just isn’t completely emotional. Nandigram has 35-40 % Muslim voters. They usually are not going to vote for the BJP. They won’t even vote for the Left, Congress or Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM if this seems to be the status battle for the CM who has gone out of her method to again them, alienating and consolidating Hindu votes within the course of.

And lastly, Mamata needs to recreate her 2011 avatar by piggybacking on the farmers’ protest in Punjab and Haryana. She needs to stir it up right into a frenzy by inciting Bengal’s agricultural landholders and workforce. And what higher place to launch it from than Nandigram, the place not less than 14 farmers have been killed allegedly within the 2007 police firing underneath the Left Front authorities.

For all these benefits, there’s a very darkish and slippery facet to her choice as properly.

First, this isn’t the Nandigram of 2007 or 2011. Farmers usually are not indignant and afraid of shedding their cultivable land now, they’re dismayed now. The motion has put the TMC in energy, but it surely didn’t get them something. In Singur, one other well-known web site of the agitation from the place the Tata’s had to remove their Nano manufacturing facility, farmers are in utter despondency. There are not any takers for his or her land.

The ploy of superimposing the present farmers’ protest on Bengal might not work as properly. The Bengal authorities has solely currently been toying with implementing a minimal assist value (MSP) for crops. Small and marginal farmers, who’re the bulk within the state’s agrarian economic system, will achieve much more from the brand new legal guidelines than by obstructing these.

Another dynamic might play out in Nandigram and probably throughout the state. The Left has been furious with Banerjee for claiming that the Nandigram firing occurred on the instruction of then Left chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya. However, the social gathering not too long ago inducted Satyajit Bandopadhyay, then a senior police officer who’s accused of finishing up the massacre in Nandigram.

The Left, which believes the forces TMC was spearheading in 2007 have been truly answerable for the occasion, might precise its revenge by transferring the votes of its supporters to the BJP. It helps CPM in the long term too. A TMC out of energy might collapse as a result of it’s successfully a one-person social gathering with out a lot cadre self-discipline or a transparent, core ideology. That might facilitate Left resurrection within the state in a couple of years.

Then there may be the opposite entice that the chief minister has walked into. By dashing to contest in Nandigram, she has hyphenated herself along with her former subordinate, Adhikari. Mamata is the larger mass chief of the 2, and it dwarfs her stature. Also, it permits the BJP to look at the competition with a bag of popcorn from the sidelines.

By entering into such a high-voltage character battle, she has additionally given BJP the prospect to restrict the most important rival campaigner, Banerjee herself, to Nandigram. It will now spend assets and create sufficient warmth to limit her motion out of concern of shedding the status battle.

And lastly, even when she wins Nandigram, how a lot will she obtain? Nandigram just isn’t Bengal. And each nook of Bengal is on saffron hearth now. Mamata Banerjee has rather more to douse than her ego.