2009 Nandigram bypoll signalled LF’s end, is Sagardighi a warning to TMC?

By Sumanta Ray Chaudhuri

Kolkata, March 5 (SocialNews.XYZ) The result of the Sagardighi assembly bypoll in Murshidabad district of West Bengal on Thursday came as a surprise to many as the dark horse in the race, the Left Front-supported Congress candidate Bayron Biswas, emerged the victor with a big margin leaving the Trinamool Congress and the BJP in distant second and third positions.

Biswas's victory was a major boost for the Congress-Left Front alliance on two counts in the backdrop of the result in the same constituency just 22 months back during the 2021 West Bengal assembly polls. In 2021, Trinamool Congress candidate Subrata Saha won by a massive margin of over 50,000 votes defeating his BJP rival Mafuza Khatun. The Left Front supported Congress candidate S.K.M. Hasanuzzaman came a distant third.

However, the picture this time was completely different where Biswas defeated the Trinamool Congress candidate Debasish Bandopadhyay, a close relative of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, by a margin of 22,986 votes putting the BJP's Dilip Saha in the third position.

Political observers feel that recovering the 2021 margin of over 50,000 votes and then establishing a winning margin of nearly 23,000 votes in 22 months was in itself an extraordinary feat.

They said that the result had dented the popular thinking that the BJP is the only alternative to combat the might of the Trinamool Congress' organizational network in West Bengal. This thinking came about because both the Congress and the Left Front were reduced to zero in terms of assembly presence in the 2021 polls, where the BJP emerged as the principal opposition in the state.

Will the result of the Sagardighi bypoll turn out to be a key indicator of a change in the power game in West Bengal, considering that there is precedence in the state where the ruling party's defeat by a huge margin in a bypoll signalled a shift in the power structure?

Political analyst Sabyasachi Bandopadhyay said that although many perceive that the first indication of the end of the 34-year Left Front rule in West Bengal was evident in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, in reality the initial signal was in the bypolls in two assembly constituencies in West Bengal in the same year just before that Lok Sabha polls.

"In 2009, there were bypolls in two erstwhile Left strongholds of Nandigram assembly constituency in East Midnapore district and Bishnupur (West) in South 24 Parganas district. Now as I see there are three common factors between the bypolls in these two constituencies in 2009 and the present one at Sagardighi in 2023. The first is high voting percentage, which is not quite common in bypolls considering that there is no possibility of a change of regime. The second common factor is the defeat of the ruling party candidate by a heavy margin in a bypoll. The final common factor is sizable minority voters' proportion in all these assembly constituencies," he pointed out.

In fact, the polling percentage in the Sagardighi bypoll was almost 80 per cent, which is in contrast to the generally low polling percentage in bypolls.

"So, it is clear that people voted in bulk in favour of the Left Front-Congress alliance in Sagardighi to give a signal not just to the ruling Trinamool Congress but also the principal opposition BJP. I admit that it is too early to say that the Sagardighi result has made the Left Front-Congress emerge as the Trinamool Congress's alternative throughout West Bengal, but surely it has brought back the alliance in the race as the principal opposition force in the state. In that perspective, the Sagardighi result has been an indicator of change in the political power game in West Bengal," Bandopadhyay added.

Political observer and columnist Amal Sarkar, however, has doubts whether the victory with a heavy margin would have been possible had there been a Left Front candidate instead of a Congress candidate. "CPI(M) or Left Front being a regimented force can always mobilize their traditional voters behind a Congress candidate as part of an alliance formula. But can the Congress leadership achieve the same mobilization of their dedicated voters in support of a Left Front candidate? That is the question. But surely the Sagardighi bypoll result was significant."

"The result was a clear signal to the Trinamool Congress that if the dedicated minority vote bank can help it to tide over the massive BJP wave in 2021, the same voters can show the state's ruling party the exit door. In my opinion the bypoll result will prompt the chief minister to let go her national-level ambitions now and concentrate more on her home turf of West Bengal," Sarkar said.

Source: IANS