The 2019 Lok Sabha election was an inflection point for the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal. After decades of being a minor party in ...
The 2019 Lok Sabha election was an inflection point for the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal. After decades of being a minor party in the state, the BJP managed an impressive performance: it won 18 MP seats and got 41% of the vote. This made it clear that the BJP was now the principal opposition party in Bengal.
The BJP achieved this using a high-voltage campaign centered on communal identity – specifically the idea of religion-based idea of Indians citizenship using the tools of the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act. These initiatives were designed to make Muslims feel vulnerable, even as they held out the promise that undocumented Hindu migrants from Bangladesh would soon have their status legalised.
Fast forward nearly two years. As the BJP now makes a concerted effort to win the state elections and dislodge the Trinamool from power, it has – till now – not repeated its 2019 playbook. Rather than bring up highly contentious issues such as the CAA, which was greeted by enormous protests across India last winter, the BJP has started its campaign with a straight bat. It has concentrated on using standard political tools like engineering defections from rival parties...
