The Bengal elections are slated to be held early next year but the battle lines have already been drawn and a fidgety Mamata Banerjee has started with her appeasement politics to woo the refugees and the significant vote bank they bring on the table. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday granted land rights to 25,000 refugee families and said that a total of 1.25 lakh families would be given land rights. She said that the land deed will be without any conditions and simultaneously allotted Rs 10 crore to the Matua Development Board and Rs 5 crore to the Namashudra Development Board.
“Today, we are giving 25,000 land right documents to the refugees. A total of 1.25 lakh refugee families would be given land rights in the days to come,” she said at a programme at the secretariat whilst also adding “This land right document will act as proof that you (the recipients) are a citizen of this country. No one can take away your citizenship.”
The Matuas, refugees from Bangladesh, who belong to the Scheduled Caste, have considerable clout in over 40 Assembly segments. TMC’s principal opposition party for the upcoming elections, BJP, has significant sway over the Matuas as the community of refugees has voted en masse for the saffron party in the past.
According to an Indian Express report, the community had backed the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, and now, ahead of the 2021 elections to the state, the BJP has been reassuring the community of the Centre’s commitment to grant them citizenship through the Citizenship Amendment Act.
During the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had led in 33 of 68 SC Assembly seats, of which 26 are Matua-dominated. Union Home Minister Amit Shah is currently on a visit to West Bengal and the announcements by Mamata Banerjee are not a mere coincidence. The Bengal CM is trying to take the fight to Amit Shah, who is quietly going about his business. The Home Minister is expected to share a meal at a Matua home in Kolkata on Friday to send a message that he is standing alongside the community and that the lollipop of ‘land rights’ that Mamata is trying to give to the refugees is merely a poll gimmick.
Overthrowing the TMC regime in the state has now become a prestige battle for the BJP, and when in 2019, Amit Shah engineered a victory over 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats of the state–poll analysts, psephologists and political enthusiasts alike were taken by complete surprise.
The BJP had back then garnered a massive 40.5 per cent vote in the state. Having been successful in the 2019 polls, the saffron party has now made it a life mission to win West Bengal’s Assembly polls early next year as well. In 2019, a study of the party’s vote across the state showed that it was ahead of the TMC in more than 125 of the 294 assembly seats in the state.
TMC and Mamta Banerjee have grown weary of the developments in the state and despite Didi’s attempts at quelling any form of dissent in the state by bashing and murdering the BJP members—it looks like, the only way out for TMC in the assembly elections is by playing the age-old card of appeasement politics.