Updated: March 3, 2021 7:22:55 am
The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) on Monday (March 1) extended their support to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress party in their fight against the BJP in the Bengal Assembly elections Western.
RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav met with Banerjee in Nabanna, the secretary of state in Calcutta, and urged his followers in Bengal to back the TMC in the elections. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav held a press conference in Uttar Pradesh to announce his party’s support for TMC.
What specific results can be expected from two regional parties of Bihar and UP offering their participation in the elections in West Bengal?
Coalition of regional parties against the BJP
By supporting the TMC, the two regional players, RJD and SP, who have the BJP as their main rival in their own states, are signaling a coalition of regional political forces against the hegemony of the national saffron party. While the next general election is still a long way off, such signage keeps alive the possibility of a third political front emerging before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The RJD, which under young Tejashwi did very well to reach a surprising distance from power in last year’s Assembly elections in Bihar, will be very happy if it can help prevent the BJP from capturing neighboring West Bengal. It will deal a blow to the BJP’s reputation as a relentless vote-winning machine, and can be expected to lift the morale of the RJD cadre.
The electoral test for Akhilesh looms much closer, with the Assembly elections perhaps less than a year away. The BJP had swept all other parties in 2017, winning 312 of the 403 seats in the UP Chamber, reducing the SP to just 54 seats. The need for a similar morale booster that can help dent the BJP’s reputation for invincibility is more urgent for the SP. Furthermore, a rapprochement with Banerjee can be expected to resonate with Bengali voters in UP, whose support the SP will find useful next year.
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TMC outreach to non-Bengali voters
An estimated 45 lakh of Hindi-speaking voters, mainly from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, live in Bengal. Voters in these two states are often courted by the BJP, the dominant party from the heart of Hindi. In their bid to defeat Banerjee, the BJP relies heavily on these votes.
TMC’s outreach to the Hindi-speaking electorate, through sponsorship of festivals like Chhath Puja, etc., is intended to build ties that it hopes will translate into voting on Election Day. The support and backing of the RJD and the SP can be a force multiplier in this effort. TMC would expect to find concrete dividends from the Tejashwi and Akhilesh initiatives in the regions of the Hooghly jute mills, the Barrackpore, Howrah, Durgapur and Asansol industrial belts, and all other places bordering Bihar and Jharkhand where there are voters from He speaks Hindi. in significant numbers.
Effort to clarify the inside-outside dichotomy
After a large number of central BJP leaders began campaigning for the party in Bengal, the TMC labeled them “outsiders.”
While this put pressure on the BJP, which relies heavily on its national leaders for electoral strategy and campaigning, the mockery of outsiders was not well received by people from other states living in Bengal. This also did not go unnoticed by the BJP.
The TMC seeking the support and endorsement of two leaders of the Hindi heartland can be understood as an effort on their part to ensure that the non-Bengali vote in Bengal does not fully carry over to the BJP.
Setback for the Left-Congress-ISF alliance
The RJD’s absence from the rally at the brigade’s parade ground in Kolkata on Sunday made it clear that it had decided not to participate in the alliance with the Congress of the Left Y Fufura’s cleric Sharif Abbas Siddiqui new party. This was significant, because the left and Congress were allied with the RJD in Bihar last year.
How the third pole of the electoral battle will influence the final outcome will depend on a number of factors, but the RJD’s choice to TMC over its Bihar allies could benefit the ruling party in its fight against the BJP.
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