How Mamata Countered BJP's Bengal Rise To Score A Hattrick

It was an election with many firsts for Mamata Banerjee. In a career spanning almost four decades, she had never contested a seat outside south Kolkata — much less against an estranged aide who jumped ship a few months prior to the polls. A spate of further poll-eve defections posed another unfamiliar challenge. A much-discussed leg injury just when the bid for a third term appeared in need of a leg-up ensured that Mamata, known to always walk the extra mile, spent almost the entire 50-day campaign in a wheelchair.

- Saibal Sen

Not all of what she had to contend with was unexpected. For Mamata, who began her electoral journey with a Lok Sabha win in 1984, the 2019 general elections that saw BJP wresting 18 out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in her citadel marked the start of a new political curve. Instead of the Left Front and Congress, her primary opponent in the 2021 race for Bengal was now BJP, which was eager to build on its gains in 121 assembly segments.

The vote share of Mamata's Trinamool Congress may have fallen by a mere 2% in the Lok Sabha polls, but its leads dropped from 211 to 164 in the 294-seat assembly. Going into the assembly elections with two full terms behind her, she also faced anti-incumbency.

The first sign of change was when poll strategist Prasant Kishor accompanied her nephew Abhishek Banerjee into her 14th-floor Nabanna Chambers office at the end of June 2019. Kishor proposed to counter anti-incumbency with a data-driven centralised approach to identify and address people’s grievances.