In fact Suvendu has been warned by the Muslims. That being said, there’s still an element of disquiet. If the Muslims are with Trinamool why shout from the rooftop that Muslims wouldn’t jettison Didi? Good question. Apparently, there are reports that Muslims are looking for an alternative – not for the BJP but, horror upon horror, for the Trinamool Congress!

With the Bihar assembly elections now history, the disquiet has coalesced: Is it the turn of West Bengal next? The BJP did not give the Trinamool time to think. It unleashed everything and everyone it had on West Bengal and on the Trinamool Congress. From Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar and heavyweight JP Nadda to superheavyweight Amit Shah, engineering defections and throwing challenges from the poll-pulpit.

Amit Shah on a blitzkrieg of Didi’s bastion swore to decimate her party and end her rule once and for all. He along with his clutch of defector TMC MLAs bragged at a well-attended rally that the BJP will win 200-plus seats in 2021 assembly elections. That made TMC stalwarts sit up and scratch their scratchpads. A swift calculation and the TMC concluded that Amit Shah was counting through his hat!

The sum total of the assessment: Sorry Mr. Shah, you aren’t Amit Big-B to make tall claims. Shahenshah’s progeny will spoil your veg-pulao! And, to reiterate, those progeny account for 31% of the West Bengal electorate. But, then, what about the 19 seats and 40% vote share in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections? Besides, the BJP is now Triamool’s main opposition and Mamata Banerjee’s only challenger in 2021.

Under the circumstances, the only recourse-and-rescue-mission for the TMC is the ‘Muslim Vote.’ The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and talk of an NRC stacked Muslim anger against the BJP, especially in West Bengal. The coronavirus pandemic and accusations against the Tabliqi Jamaat shored up that Muslim opposition to the BJP.

But Mamata Banerjee is acutely aware that things have changed in the decade since 2011. There are subtle signs that her Muslim vote-bank is wavering at one end! And any marked division in Muslim votes could make it difficult for her in 90 of the 294 seats. TMC’s disquiet has increased after Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) jumped into the fray like it did in Bihar.

Owaisi and his AIMIM could very well be the next party to migrate to for the Muslim voters of West Bengal. People who haven’t noticed should notice now at least that AIMIMM is shaping up to be the ‘Muslim party’ that India’s Muslims have been looking and waiting for. Why vote for a ‘secular’ party when they could vote for a ‘Muslim’ party? After all, the opposition is a Hindu party, the BJP!

It worked in Bihar, and it worked to a lesser extent in Maharashtra, and it would definitely work better in a state where one-third of the electorate is Muslim with many seats which could be won with Muslim votes alone. If reports are to go by, these winnable seats are in Kolkata, North Dinajpore, Malda, Murshidabad, Jalpaiguri and Nadia districts.

Mamata Banerjee has recognized this “new enemy” and has spoken of it, too. The dangers of what she says is “extremism emerging among minorities” and of a “political party that is taking money from the BJP, they are from Hyderabad, not from West Bengal.” The AIMIM was “shocked” enough to respond. “Now we have to think for the betterment of Muslims in Bengal, AIMIM’s Bengal chief Jamirul Hassan, a former Trinamool Congress leader, said.

The AIMIM will be contesting all the 294 seats in the state and will “cut” Muslim votes in all of the assembly segments. That isn’t good news for the TMC. The 2019 elections had seen a sharp Hindu-Muslim divide and it wouldn’t be different in the assembly elections, which is exactly what the BJP wants. But with the AIMIM in the fray, the BJP will be the benefactor. Will the Bengal Muslim voter take that into reckoning when casting his vote?

TMC Member of Parliament Saugata Roy is confident the Muslim voter will help the Trinamool win West Bengal. No political party, he stresses, can take West Bengal without Muslims voting for it. Roy is emphatic that Amit Shah has set himself and the BJP for disappointment, and that only because no party can win West Bengal without the Muslim vote. But maybe he wants the Muslims of West Bengal to hear him loud and clear more than he wants the BJP. The Bharatiya Janata Party in any case isn’t looking at the Muslims to land it West Bengal on a platter. A near consolidation of Hindu votes and a clear polarization of Muslim votes would do the trick for Shah and his party BJP.

Except that the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, cannot stop himself from being the ‘statesman’ and hold forth on ‘Vasudeva Kutumbakam’ and ‘sabkasaath, sabkavikas.’ With the farmers’ agitation not ready to wilt in the winter chill and the West Bengal election campaign pre-heating up, PM Modi is talking of ‘everybody forward, everybody together’ regardless of caste, creed or religion and it somehow doesn’t sound authentic as it would have in other circumstances.

After Amit Shah made his predictions and Saugata Roy blunted Shah’s confidence, pollster Prashant Kishor has thrown a challenge to Amit Shah, saying that if the BJP gets more than 100 seats he, Prashant Kishor, will quit whatever he’s good at and stop being a thorn in the BJP’s thick hide. The BJP replied to Prashant Kishor with a funny quip of its own and we’ll have to wait to see who quits and who stays?

Saugata Roy says there’s a move by the BJP to change the narrative; that false claims are being made on the development of West Bengal since 2011 when the TMC came to power. He is emphatic that the BJP will never come to power in West Bengal and says he would stand by Prashant Kishoranyday than give any credence to Amit Shah’s baseless predictions.

That being said, there still lingers the ‘Muslim Vote’ conundrum and the stark Hindu-Muslim divide in the West Bengal of today, where the other day a Muslim MP of the BJP was jettisoned by his Hindu wife of 10 years for the TMC! Sujata Mondal Khan appeared on stage with Saugata Roy and Kunal Ghosh and announced the parting holding aloft a Trinamool flag and a broad smile. Her MP hubby Saumitra Khan, who had quit the TMC to join the BJP, wept. “I’m heartbroken to see 10 years of companionship coming to an end in this manner. The Lakshmi of my home has been stolen.” To this Sujata told the media: “I love him and always will. I still have the sindoor on my forehead.” A smiling Saugata Roy put his seal on the Hindu-Muslim divide/unity with a “She is like my daughter.”
(IPA Service)