Here Is Everything You Need to Know About West Bengal Politics

West Bengal is an interesting and politically hostile state in north India.

Before getting into the so-called politics, let's first know the history and upbringing of the Bengal as a statehood.

History of West Bengal cites an important breakthrough back in 1947 when the entire Bengal went through bifurcation and was divided in two parts as West Bengal & East Bengal. Later the Eastern part was called as East PAKISTAN (current BANGLADESH) and western part was called as the West Bengal.

Thereafter another important incident in the Bengal region was the Liberation war of BANGLADESH in 1971. This was when many Bangladeshis who were the part of East Pakistan back then started a movement against the outrage of Pakistan to get separated and form their own country which later came to known as BANGLADESH.

Talking about the politics: the political parties that existed since the partition of Bengal was primarily the Indian National Congress( INC ) & United Front ( which was a part of Communist party of India, CPI ). CPI, being one of the eight nationalist parties of India got split in around 1960s and came to be known as Communist party of India Marxist, CPIM.

INCs's last Chief Minister was Sidharth Shankar who ruled west Bengal till 1977 and thereafter CPIM uprising started where one of the founding members of CPIM named as Jyoti Basu ruled West Bengal till the year 2000. And between all this, when the CPIM dominated the politics of West Bengal, a disheartening massacre occurred known as “MASSACRE OF MARICHJHAPI” where the Dalit refugees of Bangladesh who came to seek asylum in Bengal were forced to move out of the state, and we are well aware whenever there is a massacre, it registers a huge number of death tolls.


Moving forward, Jyoti Basu’s term ended in the year 2000 and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was the new Chief Minister of West Bengal who ruled West Bengal from 2000-2011 and under his tenure, in 2007, another violence hit the state which was called as “NANDIGRAM VIOLENCE” where the government brutally acquired the land of the people in Nandigram under banner of SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE which marked so many deaths.

Later in 2011, the West Bengal politics witnessed a transformation with the uprising of Trinamool Congress, TMC or All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) under the leadership of Mamta Banerjee and till date she is the Chief Minister of West Bengal. Now in 2021, Elections are at the corner and this is where the insisting things starts. Let's look at the dynamics of the 2021 elections.


Dynamics of 2021 Assembly Elections

Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP is the biggest challenge for TMC this election. BJP has been contesting elections since a long back in Bengal but was unable to gain the required vote share earlier due to the dominance of the left wing parties. Recently in the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, BJP acquired almost 40% of the vote share in Bengal which is going to be very alarming for Mamta Banerjee led TMC.


BJP is mostly appeasing for two communities this election:

Dalit Matua - Community which is led by All India Matua Associations. Matua’s are the refugees who came from Bangladesh and are still residing in India in a very bad condition. Matua Community used to support Mamta Banerjee earlier. BJP in order to appease the Community started its campaign from Thakur Nagar which is said to be the stronghold of the Community.

Namasudra - Community which has a huge population in Bengal residing mainly in the southern & central part of West Bengal provides an edge to TMC over BJP.

BJP on the other hand is cementing its foot in rural Bengal. Citizenship Amendment Act, CAA is expected to benefit BJP as due to Religious Persecution, a large number of refugees from Bangladesh came here and are still residing without Citizenship and this is what BJP is appeasing for.

Another important aspect of Bengal politics is religious vote share. Bengal constitutes approximately 70% of Hindus which they say as Bengali Hindus and almost 27% of Muslims. Muslims are said to be huge supporters of Mamta Banerjee and even she has been cited appeasing Muslims. That is why she can’t support CAA as it is said that this may upset her Muslim vote bank.

Left wing parties are willing to resurge in Bengal and now the major question arises here is- are we going to see a coalition of CPIM, INC, TMC against BJP in order to counter the growing influence of BJP in West Bengal? BJP is said to have already knocked the door of Bengal and according to Home Minister Amit Shah they are going to get almost 50% of the vote share and Bengal will see a transformation. So, overall it is going to be an interesting election to see which party is going to win this election.


Written by - Atul Bihari Chakrawarti

Edited by - Prachi Raheja