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Welcome to The India Fix by Shoaib Daniyal, a newsletter on Indian politics. To get it in your inbox every Monday, sign up here. There’s nothing journalists love more than hearing from their readers. If you have things to say to me – good or bad – shoot them over to shoaib@scroll.in.
The Trinamool started this year in crisis. Multiple reports indicated that it was going to collapse in West Bengal in the face of a massive assault by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Assembly elections. Amit Shah, Union home minister and principal strategist for the BJP, claimed that his party will achieve a majority of more than two-thirds in the Assembly.
As 2021 draws to a close, the Trinamool’s fortunes could not be more different. The party belied the pundits and crushed the BJP in the Assembly elections. While Indians have grown used to the sight of legislators defecting to the BJP, in Bengal uniquely, it was BJP MLAs who started to defect to the Trinamool. The Trinamool, hegemonic in its home state, started to expand across the country.
The party has made a major effort in expanding to Tripura. In the Sunday civic polls results, amidst widespread allegations of rigging by the ruling BJP, the Trinamool emerged as the...