In Mamata Vs Amit Shah, She Takes This Round, Easily

"Ebar didi gele, dada aashbe (Didi will be thrown out, Shah will reign)" shouted BJP party workers as Amit Shah held rallies in Kolkata in December last year. Shah, fresh from the success of the Lok Sabha elections followed by the BJP's victory in Maharashtra, had claimed that Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal would be routed soon. Yesterday, Ms Banerjee's Trinamool Congress swept to victory in  the Kolkata Municipal Corporation polls, bagging as many as 114 of the 144 wards of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation.

This election for local bodies was seen as the semi-final to next year's state election - and the Trinamool won by a huge margin, a victory which allowed party MP Derek O'Brien to take a dig at the BJP tweeting, "#BengalVerdict 92 municipalities counting on.Trinamool sweeping. BJP finishing 4th with zero...gas balloon gone phuuuush"

The CPI, which recently elevated Sitaram Yechury to chief, fared no better, securing only 18.7 per cent of the voteshare as compared to the Trinamool's 50.7 per cent. The Congress managed the third position while the BJP faced one of its worst embarrassments in recent times, reaching the bottom of the list - it didn't win a single municipality.

If the corporation polls are an indicator, Amit Shah has many lessons to learn, the most important being to avoid playing the communal card when the opposition is Mamata Banerjee.

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It must be remembered that Mamata Banerjee and her party spokespersons had claimed last year that Amit Shah was using the Burdwan blasts and identity politics to embolden communal politics in the state. While Mamata Banerjee herself cannot be absolved of all charges of goondaraj in West Bengal, her allegations did have grains of truth in them. In off-record conversations, many in the dispensation acknowledged that Modi wanted Sheikh Haseena, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, to accept a dossier from Indian intelligence agencies that stated that Mamata had been sheltering terror accused from Bangladesh. The dossier allegedly presented to Sheikh Haseena when she met the PM last year was gracefully rejected as the two women are known to be more than amicable political friends. For many days after, there were accusations by the BJP, including Amit Shah, that Mamata Banerjee was responsible for protecting the Burdwan accused. At a rally in January this year, Amit Shah stated  "About a year ago, a blast in Kolkata was hushed up by the state government. If there was a proper investigation, the explosion in Burdwan's Khagragarh would not have taken place. But the state government was more concerned about its vote bank (referring to a sizeable Muslim population in the state). Bengal is a border state and infiltration from Bangladesh is a problem. But here is a government which gives priority to vote bank politics over the national security. They are allowing infiltration from Bangladesh," claimed Shah.

After yesterday's results, Shah may have to confront the accusation that political hyperbole has embarrassed his party which had used 'development' as its calling card so successfully and should have perhaps stuck to that while appealing to West Bengal, which is still reeling behind in numbers where development is concerned.

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While humility is not a virtue that has yet been attributed to the West Bengal Chief Minister, it may be noteworthy both for the Left and the BJP to realize that West Bengal wants more than clarion bandh calls. Both the CPI(M) and the BJP have called for a bandh on Thursday in the state to protest against what they describe as the "autocracy" of the Trinamool Congress.

While local body elections in any part of the country are not influenced by the political scenario at the national level, they are suggestive of the mood on the ground, and which way the wind is likely to blow. In the 2010 corporation elections in West Bengal, held just before the assembly elections, the Trinamool made big gains - and then went on to sweep the state.

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While a significant part of the Left-leaning votebank now claims its allegiance to the cotton saree-clad "didi" as she is fondly known, the BJP must know that politics in West Bengal is hugely influenced by cadres, muscle power and political maneuvering. After its big defeat at the hands of AAP in Delhi, Bengal has exposed claims of the much-referred-to "Modi wave."  

As for Mamata, despite the embarrassing and significant taint of the Ponzi Saradha scheme that has blotted her party, voters, goodwill apparently remains intact among voters - for now.  

And her famous declaration - "Who is Amit Shah? I don't know him" - may not appear after all to be unsubstantiated political swagger.

(Rana Ayyub is an award-winning investigative journalist and political writer. She is working on a book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which will be published later this year.)

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