Mamata Banerjee is losing tribal areas to the BJP. So she has called on Hemant Soren hoping for a turnaround

In the last 10 years, Mamata Banerjee completely ignored the tribal-dominated Jangalmahal region of West Bengal, and this led to the rise of BJP in the area. The saffron party won all Lok Sabha seats in the area in the 2019 general election and TMC was wiped out. Now, in order to bring the tribal votes back to its fold, the party has roped in Hemant Soren, the CM of Jharkhand, and the leader of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.

“Purulia, Bankura and Midnapore are not new to us. We have been coming here for ages, standing in support with the Adivasis and contesting elections for many years. But this election is different. This is an election to save the values, culture, existence, religious harmony and the interests of the Adivasis. The ideals of JMM and TMC are somewhat similar and my party chose to set aside differences with Didi to stop BJP,” Soren said in an election rally.

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“After winning a few seats in the Lok Sabha election, they (BJP) think it can win the assembly election here. They had made the same mistake in Jharkhand after winning 12 of the 14 LS seats, but we ousted them and now, Didi’s TMC will do the same here,” he told the gathering.

In Bengal, BJP’s primary voter base consists of OBCs, SC and STs. Riding on the popularity in these communities; the party managed to win 18 seats out of 42 in the 2019 general elections in West Bengal. The constituencies that the party majorly won in 2019 were rural – primarily in the Western and Northern regions of the state and the people of the region trust the party, and more so, RSS. Therefore, for Soren, it would not be easy to convince these people to vote for TMC, the party which ignored them for decades.

Since the early 2010s, RSS has been tirelessly working in the state, especially in the OBC and ST-dominated areas. Dilip Ghosh, the current President of West Bengal BJP, who was appointed in 2015, comes from the Sadgop caste and is from the Jungle Mahal region of West Bengal. This has been a serious problem for Mamata Banerjee as she can feel the constituencies slipping from her hand before even the elections.

The party has performed excellently in both the 2016 assembly elections and the 2019 general elections since Ghosh was appointed as the President in the region. In the 2019 general elections, the party won 40.64 per cent votes in the state- only 3 per cent less than that of TMC. In both the elections, the party gave tickets to many Hindu OBCs, who have been traditionally ignored by all three mainstream parties of the state, Mamata’s plan to loop Hemant Soren wouldn’t succeed.

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The politics of West Bengal has always been dominated by the Bhadralok Community, which constitutes three upper castes- Brahmin, Baidya and Kayastha. These castes account for just 20 per cent of the state’s total population. But, all the CMs of the state– whether of CPM, Congress or TMC– have been from the Bhadralok community. OBCs, SCs and STs never had a say in the politics of Bengal. And this was because the Communist Party never recognised the role of caste in social upliftment.

Given the fact that BJP is the first party to give voices to the SC, ST and OBC communities of West Bengal, the communities are going to trust the saffron party and the plan of Mamata Banerjee to loop Hemant Soren and JMM into the fray is set to fall flat.