E-Paper
Decoding the first phase of West Bengal and Assam elections
Assam will vote in two more phases, to be held on April 1 and April 6. West Bengal will vote in seven more phases and polling will culminate on April 29.
Voting in two of the four states going to polls in this election cycles begins on Saturday; 47 assembly constituencies (ACs) out of the 126 in Assam and 30 out of the 294 in West Bengal will vote in the first phase of polling. Assam will vote in two more phases, to be held on April 1 and April 6. West Bengal will vote in seven more phases and polling will culminate on April 29. Here are three charts which can help understand the first phase of polls.
Where are the polls taking place?
Both West Bengal and Assam have a significant level of regional diversity in politics. This is a function of both geographical and demographic differences within the two states. The ACs which are going to polls in the first phase in West Bengal are located in four districts: Purba Medinipur, Paschim Medinipur, Bankura and Purulia. The last three are often referred to as the Jangalmahal region of West Bengal, which basically comprises of the western part of the state bordering Jharkhand and Odisha. Scheduled Tribes (STs) and other non-Bengali non-ST groups have a large share among voters in the region.
In Assam, polling will take place in the Upper Assam region and parts of North Assam and Central Assam regions in the districts of Tinsukia, Dhemaji, Dibrugarh, Sivasagar, Lakhimpur, Jorhat, Golaghat, Sonitpur, and Nagaon. All these districts except Sonitpur and Nagaon fall in the Upper Assam region, which has the highest share of Assamese speakers and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and the lowest share of Scheduled Castes (SCs). Both these sub-regions also have a very small share of Muslim voters, even though Assam and West Bengal are No.1 and No. 2 in India in terms of the share of Muslims in the population.
By the share of population that falls in the bottom 20% or the bottom 40% of national wealth quintiles given by the 2015-16 National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the first phase polling is taking place in the richest parts of Assam and one of the poorest areas of West Bengal. While Dhemaji in Upper Assam is one of the poorest districts in Assam, upper Assam as a whole is one of the richest regions of the state. Sonitpur is the richest district in North Assam and Nagaon is the second-richest district in Central Assam, with similar level of wealthy people as most Upper Assam districts. Jangalmahal in West Bengal, in contrast, is the poorest region by share of population that’s in the bottom 20% of national wealth quintiles and the second poorest by share of population in the bottom 40%.
The BJP is the dominant party in this phase if 2019 results are any indication
Of the 77 ACs going to polls in this phase, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 54 in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, if the results are disaggregated at the AC-level. The BJP’s seat share was 66.7% and 72.3% in West Bengal and Assam in these ACs in 2019.
The BJP and its alliance partner Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) have always had some footprint in these ACs in Assam. They won 27.7%, 14.9%, 80.9% and 74.5% of these ACs in the 2009, 2011, 2014 and 2016 elections. The Congress, when it won the state in the 2009 and 2011 elections, had a seat share of 66% and 80.9% in these ACs, which dropped to 12.8% in 2014 and was 19.1% and 17% in 2016 and 2019. In West Bengal, however, the BJP broke new ground in this region in 2019. The BJP did not win even a single AC in this region in the 2009, 2011, 2014 or 2016 elections. A comparison before 2009 is not possible because of a change in constituency boundaries due to delimitation.
It will take more than opposition unity to prevent the BJP from winning these regions again
Both West Bengal and Assam are pretty much bipolar contests. The rise of the BJP has relegated the Left Front and the Congress to a distant third position in West Bengal. While the Congress and the Left Front have forged an alliance with the Indian Secular Front (ISF), a party floated by a Muslim cleric Pirzada Abbas Siqququi to boost their prospects, a section of the left leaning anti-BJP voice is making a subtle argument in favour of rallying behind the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in order to prevent a BJP victory. In Assam, the Congress has tied up with the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) in these elections, which they are hoping will create a consolidation of Muslim voters.
These political realignments might not matter in the first phase of polls. In West Bengal, the TMC lost a significant share of its own vote share to the BJP between the 2014 and 2019 elections. At the state level, the TMC actually increased its vote share between 2014 and 2019. This shows that there was more to the BJP’s performance than a shift of left voters in these ACs. Even in Assam, the AIUDF did not contest any of the 47 ACs going to polls in the first phase in the 2019 elections. While the Congress managed to increase its vote share compared to the 2014 elections, it was not enough to make a dent in the BJP’s seat share.
