As the race for West Bengal Assembly elections heats up, TMC and BJP are locked in a fierce battle with the Left-Congress alliance which has negligible support on the ground, only present to tacitly support the TMC by putting up dummy candidates to eat into the BJP votes. Its effectively a BJP vs All battle in West Bengal and while the latest survey by Times Now – CVoter hints at a BJP victory in the state, however, it comes with a rider: the party needs a CM face to ensure its victory.
A survey of 8666 people from January 24 – February 4 by Times Now – CVoter, revealed that in the minds of the Bengal electorate, BJP is by far ahead of the rest in the poll run-up. A whopping 41.6 per cent of the people who were surveyed, felt that the BJP is ahead as of now, followed by the TMC with 36.9 per cent people stating that Mamata’s party is ahead currently. The Congress and Left filled up the rest of the places by scoring 8.8 and 4.4 per cent respectively.
While the mood on the ground is certainly in favour of the BJP, however, worryingly for the party, Mamata Banerjee continues to be by far the most popular CM choice amongst the other probable candidates for the West Bengal CM chair.
The survey revealed that 54.3 per cent of the respondents stated that Mamata is their most preferred choice for the post-Bengal CM followed by BJP’s Dilip Ghosh at 22.6 per cent, Mukul Roy at 7.3 per cent. Surprisingly, 4.5 per cent of the respondents stated that Sourav Ganguly whose speculations of joining the BJP refuse to die down, is their most preferred choice for the post of state Chief Minister.
The gulf between Mamata and her competitors is too big to ignore and the BJP must plug this gap by announcing a CM face who can take on ‘Brand Mamata Banerjee’. While over the years, the BJP has desisted from announcing a CM face before the polls, especially in the states where it is challenger, with case in point being Uttar Pradesh and Tripura, there’s an argument for having a CM face for the Bengal polls especially after the debacle faced by the party in Delhi last year.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) made merry of the fact that the BJP was heading into the polls without a CM face and hence fanned the flames that Manoj Tiwari would be the Chief Minister should BJP come to power in Delhi. Tiwari proved to be no match for Kejriwal and has little on-ground support or the credibility to emerge as Kejriwal’s successor.
It is clear that for the BJP to storm to power in West Bengal, defusing Mamata’s personality cult is of paramount significance and announcing a credible CM face before the polls can be one way of going about it.