2021 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election

The 2021 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election was the 17th quinquennial legislative election held in West Bengal, to elect all 294 members of West Bengal Legislative Assembly. This electoral process of 292 seats unfolded between 27 March to 29 April 2021, taking place in eight phases. Voting for the two remaining constituencies was delayed to 30 September 2021.

The incumbent Trinamool Congress government led by Mamata Banerjee won the election by a landslide, despite opinion polls generally predicting a close race against the Bharatiya Janata Party, which became the official opposition with 77 seats. For the first time in the history of Bengal, no members from INC and Communist party were elected.

Background

Electoral system

Outlined in Article 168 of the Constitution of India, the West Bengal Legislative Assembly is the only house of the unicameral legislature of West Bengal, not a permanent body, and subject to dissolution. The assembly term lasts for five years unless it is dissolved earlier. Members of the Legislative Assembly are directly elected by the people, and the tenure of the Sixteenth West Bengal Legislative Assembly was scheduled to end on 30 May 2021.

Previous general election

In the 2016 election, the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC or TMC) retained its majority in the Legislative Assembly with 211 seats. The Indian National Congress won 44 seats and the Left Front won 33 seats from their alliance, while the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha won 3 seats each out of the total 294 seats.

Political developments

Since the by-elections held for the Kanthi South seat in 2017, it became evident that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had overtaken the Left Front as the primary opposition party in the state. According to various political analysts, the shifting of the Left Front and other opposition voters towards the BJP caused the party's vote share to significantly increase. In spite of widespread violence, the BJP emerged as the second largest party in the 2018 elections to the state panchayats mainly due to the shifting of the Left Front's voter base. The long-held stereotype of Bengali Hindus being averse to right-wing politics was shattered when the BJP won the 2018 assembly elections in Tripura, another Indian state with a Bengali Hindu majority, ruled till then by CPI(M)-led alliance of Communist parties since 1993.

In the 2019 general elections, the BJP increased its number of Lok Sabha seats from 2 to 18, and took 40% of the vote share, an increase from 11% in the 2016 elections. Trinamool Congress (TMC) was reduced from 34 to 22 seats, Indian National Congress (INC) was reduced from 4 to 2 seats, and for the first time since their individual inceptions, no party from the Left Front (namely CPI(M), CPI, AIFB and RSP) was able to win a single seat from the state. This was the best ever performance of the BJP in the state (where it had never won more than 2 seats) in terms of both seats and voteshare. Public anger towards corruption and hooliganism of a section of TMC cadres in rural areas during the 2018 panchayat elections, religious polarisation by BJP fueled by resentment of a section of Bengali Hindu society towards Mamata Banerjee's tactics of Muslim appeasement, and large scale support of the Rajbongshi and Matua communities for granting Indian citizenship to exclusively non-Muslim Bangladeshi immigrants over fears of a demographic change fuelled by infiltration of undocumented Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, allegedly supported by Mamata Banerjee have been cited as important reasons behind the rise of BJP in West Bengal alongside the decline of Left Front.

With Narendra Modi becoming the only non-Congress prime minister to remain in power for two consecutive terms (amounting to ten years) without depending on the support of the National Democratic Alliance, and the BJP fulfilling the wish of its founder Shyamaprasad Mukherjee by revoking the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and long standing promise of resolving the Ayodhya dispute in favour of Hindus, the party considered the formation of a BJP-led state government in West Bengal (a state which has historically never voted for right-wing parties in large numbers) for the first time as a means of paying homage to Mukherjee, who hailed from there. A BJP victory in West Bengal would have also demoralised Mamata Banerjee's attempts of creating a non-BJP non-Congress alliance of regional parties that might play an important role in the upcoming general elections.

BJP increased their seats in the assembly from 3 to 53 when the West Bengal Legislative Assembly was dissolved through defections from TMC, INC, and Left Front leaders, and by-elections from 2016 to 2021. A prominent defector in December 2020 was Suvendu Adhikari, who was a long-time associate of Mamata Banerjee, and a state cabinet minister who was dissatisfied over the rising influence of her nephew Abhishek Banerjee in the party. However, Adhikari revealed that he was in contact with the BJP since 2014 after he joined the party. His father Sisir Adhikari, the MP from Kanthi, also defected from TMC to BJP. Another cabinet minister, Rajib Banerjee, also joined BJP.

However, the TMC won the Kharagpur Sadar seat from BJP and Kaliaganj seat from the INC, while retaining the Karimpur seat in the by-polls held later in 2019 after Abhishek Banerjee employed Prashant Kishor as the election strategist of Trinamool Congress for the upcoming polls. Elections to municipal bodies of West Bengal (which include 112 municipalities and the municipal corporations of Kolkata, Howrah, Bidhannagar, Chandannagar, Asansol and Siliguri) could not be held as scheduled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India.

Political issues

COVID-19

The pandemic became an election issue. The government was accused of "fudging" the count of positive cases and deaths in the region, and the AITC-led state government and BJP-led union government blamed each other for the surge in COVID-19 infections over the course of the campaign.

The BJP accused Mamata Banerjee of not attending COVID-19 emergency management meetings held during the months of election campaigning, despite the second wave of infections, and for also holding election rallies. Sanjukta Morcha held the first Brigade rally ahead of polling in West Bengal. In mid-April, TMC requested holding the remaining phases of the elections in a single phase amid the rising number of COVID cases, but it was rejected by the Election Commission of India (ECI).

Cyclone Amphan

In May 2020, a year before the 2021 elections, Cyclone Amphan hit the state. After it passed, widespread allegations of mismanagement and relief scam were reported. Protests broke out in some districts over the allegations, and the opposition made it an election issue ahead of the Assembly polls.

Citizenship, immigration and refugee issues

In 2019, the BJP-led Union Government passed the CAA in Parliament, promising citizenship to immigrants and refugees belonging to religious minorities in Bangladesh, and providing them with rehabilitation. The BJP's Bengali booklet released in January 2020 claimed that the National Register of Citizens was implemented to identify allegedly undocumented illegal Muslim immigrants, but religiously persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, Jains, Parsi, and other religious minorities would be "shielded" by the CAA.

Other issues

Polarisation amongst various religious, linguistic, and caste communities were also likely to play a role in this election. Both TMC and BJP had promised schemes for various communities. Although previously mobilized by Left governments against elites under the "class" narrative, the Dalits of West Bengal began to assert their identity politically. Religious polarization is particularly intense in districts bordering Bangladesh, such as North 24 Parganas. Arguments regarding who are native to the state and constituencies were also likely to impact the elections. Dissatisfaction and defection of many TMC leaders to BJP, allegedly due to rising influence of Abhishek Banerjee and Kishor in party administration was also likely to impact the elections.

An event was organised by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in Kolkata's Victoria Memorial to commemorate Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's 125th birth anniversary, which was attended by PM Narendra Modi and CM Mamata Banerjee among others. A large number of BJP activists were present in the crowd. Just as Banerjee got up to speak, BJP supporters started chanting "Jai Shri Ram" which prompted the CM to abandon her speech. This incident led to a political slugfest between the BJP and the TMC ahead of the upcoming elections. Meanwhile, Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh made controversial remarks about Netaji. Mamata claimed that the BJP had "insulted Netaji and Bengal" by their actions. The BJP leadership criticised Banerjee while the Left Front and the Congress backed her and condemned the BJP for the incident of Victoria Memorial. Not only political personalities but also non-political people from different levels of the society, including Netaji's grandnephew Sugata Bose, condemned the incident of chanting religiopolitical slogans by BJP supporters which was unlikely for an apolitical event dedicated to Netaji.