Legend has it that West Bengal is always in vogue. In 2021 amidst the ongoing pandemic, West Bengal was indeed a popular subject due to the much-awaited West Bengal Legislative Assembly election.
All eyes were on the state election as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made several inroads in the state hoping to embark their win. The stage was set for the saffron camp to replace the Trinamool Congress but the dream of BJP started with a bang and ended in a whimper.
Several heavyweight BJP leaders from the national capital including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah attended several rallies urging people to vote for ‘change’ in order to build ‘Sonar Bangla’.
Notably, the TMC also didn’t leave any stones unturned and went all out to campaign about the schemes started by the TMC government and urged the women of the state to support the TMC. But as fate could have it, TMC Supremo Mamata Banerjee defeated BJP and secured 219 out of 294 seats in the Assembly and formed her government for the third consecutive time in West Bengal.
It is pertinent to mention that though TMC had won the Assembly polls, TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee could manage to win the Nandigram constituency against BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari. During poll campaigning, the TMC Supremo had even hurt her leg and during the entire campaign, she was in a wheelchair.
Soon after TMC’s victory, several TMC leaders who had joined the BJP ahead of the polls defected back to the TMC and the BJP claimed that they are ‘power hungry’.
Starting the trend, BJP MLA Mukul Roy defected back to TMC in June, following which other leaders, including a few MLA who had won the seat under BJP’s ticket, rejoined TMC.
The slugfest between the BJP and TMC started soon after the poll results came out and declared TMC as the winner, BJP also claimed that post-poll violence was recorded from across the state.
The BJP had even moved both the Supreme and Calcutta High Court over the issue and after the court’s order, CBI was asked to probe the incident of post-poll violence. Amidst the claim, the TMC continuously urged the Election Commission to hold the bypoll at Bhawanipore where Mamata contested so that she can continue with the post of Chief Minister. During the bypoll, BJP had to forfeit their election fund as the TMC had swept the polls by a large margin.
Since then, her party has been on a mission to expand territory beyond Bengal, especially in the BJP-ruled states where the opposition is weak. In Meghalaya, the TMC became the main opposition party and in the recent past, TMC had even contested Agartala civic poll in Tripura and has also planned to contest Goa Assembly polls scheduled in February.
Though the TMC claims to give a fight to the BJP, the Congress leaders are claiming that the main agenda of TMC is to break Congress. It is seen that several heavyweight Congress leaders from different states are joining the Trinamool Congress.
Soon after the Assembly election, the second wave of the pandemic increased by leaps and bounds in the state. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that due to the inroads of the Central leaders from other states, and also due to the eighth phase of the election, the course of Covid cases saw a rise in West Bengal.
Soon after this development, another round of slugfest started between the state and central government over the supply of vaccination. The TMC claimed that the Central government is doing ‘sabotage’ over the vaccine supply.
Rubbishing TMC Supremo’s claim, BJP said that the TMC government is wasting vaccines and is not setting up vaccination camps to vaccinate people on time.
After the Assembly election, another feather in Mamata’s cap was the huge win in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. The Kolkata Municipal Corporation has never witnessed the dominance of one party that the TMC has now with 134 of 144 seats.
In nearly two-thirds of Kolkata’s municipal wards, all candidates against the TMC lost their deposits. Though ‘All is well that ends well,' but with sad news for the Mamata-led TMC, veteran TMC leader Subrata Mukherjee died this year making a serious loss in state's politics.
