Indeed the BJP national chief has reason to wish the TMC government packing up. Have not his party's best campaigners, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah's joint endeavour to woo the voters failed in West Bengal in successive elections?

To make matters worse, many of the TMC leaders who had switched loyalty to the saffron camp on the eve of the 2021 Assembly polls have returned to the Trinamool in ashes and sackcloth. Electoral reverses have convinced these leaders that the saffron camp has no big future in West Bengal.

Moreover, the saffron leadership has seen its time tested tactic of engineering defections come to a naught. In the summer of 2024, it has to bring out something new from its bag of tricks. Indeed the BJP's juggernaut has slowed down after entering West Bengal in 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Ironically, the saffron camp expected smooth sailing in this state after gaining a toehold in it in alliance with TMC in the late 1990s after the Party was founded by Mamata Banerjee in 1998.

Adding a personal touch, the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had dropped in at the tiled roof home of TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee to persuade her not to walk out of NDA coalition. Mamata did not relent and from then, TMC followed a course of zigzag relationship finally emerging as the major rival of the BJP in Bengal after Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.

Ever since, the BJP and TMC have been sworn political opponents. At a time when saffron camp candidates emerged victorious all over north, east and north east parts of the country, West Bengal remained unconquered by the BJP.

Political differences descended to personal ones after the mantle of BJP leadership passed on from Vajpayee to Modi. If invectives were hurled at Modi by the Trinamool supremo in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, a subsequent election witnessed Nadda's convoy being attacked in South-24-Parganas.

The Centre-State relations have indeed dropped to a new low. In an almost unprecedented move, the BJP-led NDA government has stopped the aid to some house building schemes on the plea of irregularities in accounting for the funds disbursed till date.

Even as Prime Minister Modi and arguably his principal political rival in regional political parties, TMC supremo Banerjee continue to lock horns, certain commonalities and differences emerge in their persona and politics. They are first among equals in their outfits.

Both are principal vote catchers in their respective political outfits. But while Modi has grown in political stature within BJP which has had its share of political stalwarts like Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, the scenario differed in Trinamool.

The party has grown in reach and influence around the charisma of Mamata Banerjee. There are hardly any collective decision making at TMC's top level where Banerjee has the last word and has emerged as the supremo in the process.

Indeed this feature of decision making has helped the TMC hit the ground running faster than the saffron camp though the latter is known to be a cadre based outfit. For all its organisational muscle, the BJP finds itself cornered by TMC in West Bengal in successive elections.

Mamata Banerjee campaigning all over the state with a gammy leg and thereby riding high on the sympathy factor managed to ward off the BJP "incursion" in the 2021 Assembly elections. Prime Minister Modi and Union home minister Shah making almost daily trips failed to get the better of their political rival.

If the "supremo centric" style of functioning of TMC has failed to get its foot marks outside the state, its leadership read the supremo can pat herself on the back for having made the home base of her party secure. But in this bargain the TMC continued to be a regional party though an influential one

In the campaigning of the forthcoming elections, the TMC finds itself on a backfoot. It is reeling under the impact of the charges of cattle and sand smuggling, cash for teaching and municipalities jobs together with rationing irregularities.

Several of its leaders including Partha Chatterjee, Anubrata Mondal and Jyoti Priya Mullick stated to be key aides to the supremo are behind the bars on corruption charges. It has adversely affected the "sounding board" of the supremo who sought inputs from them.

The BJP, the principal Opposition party in the state is going at the ruling dispensation with a divided leadership. It continues to be dependent on it's star campaigners and saddled with a state leadership short on charisma and a listless cadre force. Thus a national party is taking on a regional one in West Bengal. without being sure of its organizational success.

It remains to be seen whether BJP can put a stop to the winning run of TMC. It has to be kept in mind that though a powerful regional outfit despite a slew of charges against it, the Trinamool has emerged with its head bloodied but unbowed in many past electoral battles. (IPA Service)