Politically saying, the Left front has been largely decimated nationally and in the state of West Bengal after the 2011 state election, though it has a hold in Kerala.
Mamata Banerjee had come to power in the state Assembly in Kolkata in the landmark election of 2011, which dismounted the 34 years-old rule of the Left front. After that, the TMC was expected to solve the problems left by the Left front. But, something different began to happen along with some landmark achievements in terms of policy like the UN-recognized Kanyashri scheme.
From 2013-14 onwards, leaders of TMC led by CM Banerjee have repeatedly & staunchly said no to the question, whether TMC would come to support BJP. But, more importantly, TMC kept concentrating its attacks on BJP, which was a poor fourth in the state with nil presence. In the 2011 election, BJP had not won a single seat, while its then alliance partner, GJM had won three seats. The GJM is currently supporting the TMC. But, instead of focusing on West Bengal, TMC kept its barrage of criticisms directed towards the saffron camp, which has now managed to have many leaders like Suvendu Adhikari, Rajeeb Banerjee & Baishali Dalmiya switched over to the saffron camp.
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After the fallout of the partition in 1947, the higher caste populace has largely shifted towards the urban circles in West Bengal. This apart from the mental biases has kept the caste divide alive on a demographical scale in the state over the decades. The issues of unemployment & deindustrialization which were the hallmarks of the later years of the Left front rule have aggravated over the years, especially after 2014-15, since when the national economy also gradually started losing its sheen. Both of the issues had caused a large number of unemployed youth to move into Syndicate mafia, which was again the baby of the Left rule.
The drumbeating of BJP about the Gujarat model, which has its own myriad fallacies & assumption biases, has managed to turn the debate towards the issue of industrialization in Bengal. It should concern TMC that as they were focused on criticizing BJP, that very thing allowed the attention to be on the saffron camp, and it used the political muscle it had gained after the 2014 & 2019 election victories to make inroads into Bengal polity much to the chagrin of TMC.
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The upcoming Bengal election in the form of TMC vs BJP will test the political acumen of TMC against the surge of the saffron camp. The Left and the Congress are fighting the Bengal election jointly, along with the Indian Secular Front or ISF.
Elections to the 294-seated West Bengal assembly will be held in eight phases starting from March 27 with the final round of voting taking place on April 29. The counting of votes will take place on May 2.