Four states and a union territory are going to witness a large electoral exercise in the first major elections in India after the Bihar polls.

In this context, the ruling party in West Bengal, TMC is caught between the saffron camp of BJP which is trying to make inroads into Bengal polity & the greenhorn like Indian secular front (ISF), which has been founded by the Pirzada of Furfura Sharif.

Leadership of Shiv sena in Maharashtra has clearly stated that it would not contest the Bengal election and that it supports the CM & TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, with Sanjay Raut tweeting that the State election would be a battle between Money, Media, Muscle of BJP vs the Mamata.

Central election committee of BJP, in this regard, may soon announce it’s first  list of 60 candidates for the Bengal election.

While TMC has itself been blamed numerous times of appeasement politics, it has maintained that it works on a social and secular line. To assuage the doubts about it’s non-appeasing secular credentials, it has given monetary benefits to Durga Puja committees & it has been selecting leaders from across the communities.

Another headache-inducing concern for the TMC camp, prior to election, has been the association between the newbie party ISF & the Left-Congress alliance, which had recently hosted a huge rally at the Brigade ground, Kolkata.

On the other hand, BJP is going all guns blazing with new members and leaders from TMC who have defected to the saffron camp, bouying the sentiments among the ground level workers.

But, at the ground level, the BJP men are vastly outnumbered by the TMC cadres.

This, on the other hand, does not shield the TMC from the challenges posed by the ISF.

The regions where the Pirzada, Abbas Siddique, who founded the ISF, has a strong hold and influence can see a plummeting share of votes for the TMC.

And, association of ISF with the Left and Congress can help them play around with & salvage some non-BJP Hindu votes which were lost to TMC, which can be problematic for TMC & BJP. But this association can also turn out to be beneficial for BJP, given the religious tone and background of the ISF founder Siddique, which can be used by the saffron party to play it’s own religious identify card.

The saffron camp is hoping to make a breakthrough in the Bengal election, especially through its vociferous IT cell campaign where many fake stories & narratives are known to be permeated through the social media. It is also pinning it’s hope on the likes of Rajeeb Banerjee whose clean image can be big plus or Suvendu Adhikari, whose influence can help change the political calculus in West Midnapore, Bankura, Purulia, Murshidabad and Malda. BJP is also relying on the appeal of the projects like ‘Lokkho Sonar Bangla’ where the saffron party says that it is seeking citizens’ participation in preparation of manifesto.

TMC, helped by the professional expertise of I-PAC (under Prashant Kishor), can not unsee or ignore these developments. It will be worthwhile to see how deftly can TMC undo the impacts of the recent rounds of defections, which many have compared to house-cleaning.

In this context, a prominent drawback of BJP in Bengal is that it is made up of leaders who are nothing but suave opportunists, and they are cut off from the ground level sentiments in the state.

They are in BJP only in search of better political future, not for ideological inclination, or for that matter, people’s welfare.

For the TMC, the challenges originate not only from the BJP which is using the 3Ms- money, media, & muscle, as stated by the Shiv Sena leader-Raut, but also from the ISF which is using a different kind of polarization game, which has been criticized even by Congress leaders like Anand Sharma (a member of G-23 dissenter group).

Hence, the Bengal election 2021 would be a true testing ground for the political appeal of  TMC in an age of social media and the acumen of I-PAC, whose chief-Kishor has challenged that BJP would struggle to cross double digits.