By D N Singh
Although at the Panchayat level but the BJP has suffered one big debacle in the Bengal Panchyat polls it had, perhaps never thought of. That obviously shoot up Mamata Banerjee to a new orbit in the run up to the 2024 mega polls.
Mamata’s victory at the panchayat level has not only come as a big moral boost for the opposition but a rude shock to the Modi-Shah duo where the Union HM had made a claim of 35 seats out of 42 seats in the ensuing 2024 Lok Sabha polls has now seem fizzling out given what the Bengal voters have shown at the grass root.
As is obvious that the rulal bodies’ psyche plays a major role in the national level elections . This is the real symptom of Bengal rural bodies’ poll results for national politics ahead of the 2024 Parliamentary elections and is bound to raise the morale of Opposition forces trying to unite against many odds.
What is almost written on the walls is the thumping win in which Didi had the benefit of Bengal’s women voters those who reversed the thoughts of Sha now proved shrill.
Mamata in fact left the ground for the others to try their luck in their way but Mamata could protect her fortress refusing the BJP a change in the pipeline.
Just before the 2024 Mamata has emboldened her position further even after about 12 years rule when she had trounced the Left to hold the reins. What reversal of slogans like BJP’s ‘no vote for Mamata’ to ‘Now vote for Mamata’.
But the dominance of the Trinamool Congress is crystal clear from trends emerging from centres where the votes for 3317 Gram Panchayats with 63229 seats, 341 Panchayat Samitis with 9730 seats, and 20 Zilla Parishads with 928 seats are being counted by hand.
“The BJP is no doubt the runner-up in the Panchayat race. But it is a very, very poor second, limping far behind the galloping victor. And snapping at the BJP’s heels is the CPI(M)-Congress-Indian Secular Front coalition” opined Ajay Anand, a Kolkata based senior journalist.
