After Bihar, amid SIR exercises in Bengal

way2barak November 16: Barely hours after the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) secured an overwhelming majority in Bihar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sounded the ominous bugle on political rival and West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee. “Just as the Ganga flows from Bihar to Bengal, Bihar has now shown the path for the BJP’s victory in West Bengal. I congratulate the people of Bengal. Together, we will uproot jungle raj from the state,” he asserted.

The moment was infectious. Jubilation quickly spread to the BJP’s offices in West Bengal, with party workers in Kolkata’s Salt Lake and Central Avenue cheering lustily as the NDA crossed the 200-seat mark in Bihar. Flags waved, posters of Modi were hoisted, and supporters shared sweets to mark the moment. Chants of “Next is Bengal” echoed through the gatherings.

Bengal BJP state president Shamik Bhattacharya highlighted Bihar’s peaceful and incident-free Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process as a model of the NDA’s governance.

He was quick to clarify, however, that SIR is not a political `weapon’. “Our focus is on removing illegal voters in Bengal,” he said, adding that BJP had defeated Arvind Kejriwal, won Haryana, Maharashtra and Bihar, with Bengal as the next destination.

In Bihar, critics say the deletion of nearly 47 lakh voters under the Election Commission (EC) organised SIR, may have impacted the state’s poll outcome, considering omissions roughly worked out to 15,000-20,000 voters per segment in the state’s 243 assembly seats.

For the BJP, the message and the medium is clear. If a heavyweight like Lalu Yadav and his RJD can be knocked out, so can be Mamata Banerjee, who if anything, is a bigger number in the prevailing political matrix. And if that were to happen, the BJP would hardly have any opposition left in the country, save the odd Stalin in Tamil Nadu or Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh.

But On November 10, Mamata Banerjee dubbed the ongoing SIR of electoral rolls as `votebandi’ and asserted that she would protect the rights of voters at any cost, even if it meant her throat getting slashed’. Urging the EC to immediately halt the SIR, she asserted that unless the exercise was executed flawlessly, with every genuine voter included in the final rolls, its implementation in Bengal would not be as easy as it was in Bihar.

Under these circumstances, taking on such a well-entrenched force – particularly in rural Bengal – is a far cry from implementing the SIR in Bihar, where key NDA leader Nitish Kumar was not just a long-standing serving chief minister with the administration on his side, but also a dedicated cadre to take on the opposition.