E-Paper
BJP’s Bengal election campaign to focus on central govt schemes
The BJP is seeking to attract the 35.9 million women voters who make up 49% of the electorate, the SC communities that account for 23.51% of the population and the STs that are 5.8% of the population, according to the 2011 census.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is preparing to launch an information blitzkrieg in poll-bound West Bengal, particularly in Trinamool Congress (TMC) strongholds, to draw the people’s attention to the loss of benefits resulting from the non-implementation of Central schemes in the state.
According to party functionaries privy to the details, the BJP is keen on pivoting the election campaign in Bengal on economic development and wants to highlight the discrepancies in the implementation of schemes such as housing, water supply and gas connections for the poor.
“In TMC strongholds such as Kolkata Uttar, Kolkata Dakshin and parts of Jadavpur, the party will carry out targeted canvassing, reaching out to women, the poor and scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs) who have been deprived of the benefits of the schemes,” said a senior party leader aware of the campaign strategy, requesting anonymity.
The BJP seeks to attract the 35.9 million woman voters who make up 49% of the electorate, the SC communities that account for 23.51% of the population and the STs that comprise 5.8% of the population, according to the 2011 census.
In the 2019 general elections as well as a clutch of assembly polls, including in Bihar last year, the BJP accrued electoral gains from leveraging the response to schemes that offered subsidised housing for the poor, free gas connections for households that relied on wood and other polluting fuels for cooking, rural electrification and construction of toilets to end open defecation.
Since women voters were perceived to have played a key role in the party’s performance, it wants to create a constituency of women supporters in West Bengal as well.
Union minister for Jal Shakti Gajendra Singh Shekhawat told HT in an interview that the West Bengal polls will be contested on the plank of development for the first time.
Lashing out at the Mamata Banerjee government, he said nearly 7 million small and marginal farmers in the state had lost out on cash transfers of ₹6,000 per year. He also said that despite having a woman in the chief minister’s position, the state has an abysmal record on women’s safety.
While the TMC has been supportive of the ongoing farmers’ campaign for a repeal of three contentious farm laws, the BJP has drawn attention to how, for about 25 months now, the West Bengal government has refused to pass on the benefits of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojna (PM-Kisan) to the farmers.
According to data with the Union agriculture ministry, farmers of West Bengal lost out on ₹9,660 crore because of the non-implementation of the scheme. “About 2.441 million farmers from West Bengal had independently applied online to enrol under this scheme,” said a second BJP functionary who requested anonymity.
“Non-implementation of the Ayushman Bharat [health insurance] scheme has deprived nearly 40 million people of free healthcare services of up to ₹5 lakh each. Similarly, the pace of work under the Jal Jeevan Mission has been terribly slow. When the Har Ghar Nal mission was announced in August 2019, only 214,000 i.e. only 1.31% rural households had access to tap water in their homes. By February 10, 2021, the figure was 1.036 million or 6.35% of the total households,” the second functionary said.
Non-implementation of the 7th Pay Commission recommendations in West Bengal has also made its way to pamphlets, messages on social media platforms, audio and video clips that are being used for the election campaign in addition to door-to-door visits.
The TMC, on its part, said it has several schemes aimed at providing healthcare services and to empower women and economically weaker sections. “Our party has walked the talk on empowerment for women. We gave more representation to them in elections, and our empowerment schemes such as Kanyashree Prakalpa, which provides for education and prevention of early marriage, worked on the ground,” said a TMC functionary on condition of anonymity.
The TMC functionary said the state government recently provided data of the beneficiaries of the state’s Swasthya Sathi scheme. “Nearly 20 million people have been issued cards and over 4 million have benefited from the cashless insurance scheme that offers health coverage of ₹5 lakh per annum per family.”
Political commentator and Calcutta University professor Kingshuk Chatterjee said the BJP had been capitalising more on corruption at the local level than on the absence of central schemes on the ground.
“In rural Bengal, there has been a reasonably positive response to the TMC schemes. In the urban areas, people support TMC for different reasons. However, the one thing that people have been complaining about against the TMC is people lining their pockets. Local corruption has grown rampantly in the last 10 years and there is a favourable wind in favour of the BJP,” Chatterjee said.
