Battle For Bengal - BJP Banks On Dalits And Tribals To Defeat Mamata

The BJP had won big among a section of West Bengal's scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In the time since, it seems to have reached out to them even more. Can the party repeat its performance in the assembly elections?

- Rabi Banerjee

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently lashed out at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at three different rallies. “How could a person close to Mamata Banerjee call dalits beggars?” he thundered in Krishnanagar.

He was referring to Trinamool leader Sujata Mondal, who had allegedly made the remark in an interview. “Bengal’s chief minister remains a mute spectator because she approves this,” Modi said in two other rallies in North 24 Parganas and Siliguri.

Several other BJP leaders, including Home Minister Amit Shah, also slammed Mamata on the issue. Mondal, the Trinamool candidate from the reserved seat of Arambagh, was stopped from entering a village in the constituency on the day of the election, April 6.

For the first time in recent history, the BJP has made caste an election issue in Bengal. Scheduled castes make up around 24 per cent of the state's population; scheduled tribes account for about 6 per cent. According to the BJP's internal estimates, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the party had won about 80 per cent of the tribal and 60 per cent of the scheduled caste vote in the state.

This had hurt Mamata, who then began to woo the Matuas, one of the more populous lower castes, and the Kurmis, the biggest tribal community in the

Junglemahal region. The BJP had done well in Junglemahal in 2019 largely thanks to the Kurmis; the group is part of the other backward classes list, but has been demanding scheduled tribe status for a while.