The roles Muslims play in West Bengal's politics | Number Theory

HT has looked at West Bengal MLAs from the 1962 assembly election and put together data on the number of Muslim MLAs in each assembly since 1962

The first part of this series looked at the importance of the Muslim vote in West Bengal for the Trinamool Congress. This part will look at the importance of Muslims in the state’s politics on a longer-term basis.

Hindustan Times file

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  Muslims are under-, not over-represented in the West Bengal assembly

  West Bengal saw 44 Muslim MLAs being elected in the 2021 assembly elections. This comes to 15% of the total MLAs in the state. Given the fact that 27% of the state’s population is Muslim, West Bengal actually suffers from under- representation of Muslims when it comes to elected representation in the state. The under-representation of Muslims appears even more marked if one compares the relative share of Muslim MLAs at the district level after adjusting for their population. This can be calculated by dividing the share of a particular district in number of Muslim MLAs and their total population in the state in the 2011 census. This number is less than one, suggesting an underrepresentation in 12 of the 19 districts in the state. See Chart 1: District-wise relative share of Muslim MLAs in West Bengal
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  Number of Muslim MLAs peaked in West Bengal before the BJP’s rise

  The number of elected representatives is often seen as the strength of lack of it for a particular community’s political clout in India. HT has looked at West Bengal MLAs from the 1962 assembly election and put together data on the number of Muslim MLAs in each assembly since 1962. The 2021 assembly election in West Bengal saw 44 Muslim MLAs being elected. This was significantly lower than what this number was in 2011 (57) and 2016 (59), but not very different from what it has been between 2016 and 2021. Why did the number of Muslim MLAs fall between 2016 and 2021? In 2016, the party-wise breakup of Muslim MLAs in West Bengal was 32-18-9 between the TMC-Congress and Left. In 2021, all but one Muslim MLA was from the TMC. The TMC dropped the number of Muslim candidates it fielded between 2016 and 2021 from 55 to 46.While its Muslim candidates had a much better strike rate in 2021 (XX%) than in 2016 (XX%), the number of all Muslim MLAs fell. See Chart 2: Muslim MLAs in Bengal
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  The BJP’s rise entails a situation where Muslims cease to be a bipartisan community in the state

  This is the most important takeaway as far as the present dynamics are concerned. Because the BJP’s rise in West Bengal politics is relatively recent, and it has largely come at the cost of an erosion in the support base of the communists and the Congress, West Bengal is now in a situation where Muslims have overwhelmingly consolidated behind the TMC. This also means that, depending on whether or not the TMC is in power, Muslims will either be confined to the treasury benches or opposition benches in the new assembly, like in the existing one. To be sure, most Indian states, with the exception of Kerala, are in this situation right now; it is West Bengal which is losing its exceptionalism.
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  Which was not the case even until the 2021 elections

  Given the skew in West Bengal’s Muslim population, it is likely that they form a large part of the electorate in quite a few ACs. Since official data on the religious composition of the electorate is not available, HT looked at the religious background of runner up candidates in ACs which elected a Muslim MLA in 2021. Of the 44 such ACs, 19 were those where even the runner-up candidate was a Muslim, which suggests that the electorate is overwhelmingly Muslim here which is why both major contenders fielded a Muslim candidate. Five out of these 19 had runner up Muslim candidates who were actually fielded by the BJP. The BJP also fielded four more Muslim candidates; in one of those contests, a BJP candidate lost to a candidate fielded by the TMC. In these four assembly constituencies (ACs), the BJP came in third place in 2021. The BJP has not fielded any Muslim candidate in the 2026 elections, which suggests that it is aiming at a complete communal polarisation in these elections.
• Because the BJP’s rise has been accompanied by the collapse of the Congress and the Left, Muslims have lost their bipartisan stake in West Bengal and face a situation where political polarisation means communal polarisation as well. This is the second of a three-part data journalism series on Muslims in West Bengal politics. The second and the third part will look at the history of Muslims in West Bengal’s electoral politics and demography.