Kolkata:
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation and Howrah Municipal Corporation elections are knocking at the door. A few other municipal elections may also take place around the same time, most likely after the Durga Puja and Diwali festivities.
The BJP leadership has made one thing clear: in the upcoming Kolkata Municipal Corporation election, which will now have 209 seats, the party will fight alone. The BJP has decided to follow an “Ekla Chalo” policy in the civic elections.
Why is the BJP taking this decision?
The question becomes important because NCPI leader Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar has said that, since NCPI is an ally of the NDA, the party expects to contest the West Bengal municipal elections together with the BJP. She has indicated that there is a possibility of an electoral understanding between the two parties.
But BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya has made the party’s position equally clear. Even if there is an alliance or coalition partner at the national level, that does not automatically mean that the same arrangement will be applicable at the state level during municipal elections. There will not automatically be seat adjustments or an alliance in Bengal simply because the two parties are partners in Delhi.
As Samik Bhattacharya has pointed out, national politics and state politics are not always the same. In fact, they have often moved in completely different directions in the past. His argument is that Delhi and Bengal have different political realities, and therefore a national-level arrangement cannot simply be imposed on West Bengal’s municipal politics.
There is another factor. The dissident section of the Trinamool Congress, including the group Ritabrata Banerjee, who has been recognised as the Leader of the Opposition by the Speaker, is also indicating that it will fight separately. So the political field is becoming more complicated.
The question, therefore, is why the BJP itself wants to fight alone. There are mainly three political reasons.
The first reason is that the BJP does not want to give the impression that it is joining hands with breakaway TMC leaders. At the national level, this question has already been raised within the BJP. The state leadership, particularly Samik Bhattacharya, has repeatedly said that the BJP will not allow the party to become “Trinamoolised”. This is an important ideological and organisational concern.
If there are disputes within the TMC rebel camp over who will contest from Rejinagar and Nandigram or any other constituency, which candidate will stand, or how their internal arrangements will work, that is essentially an internal matter of the TMC’s breakaway group. The BJP does not want to become a party to those internal disputes. The BJP wants to preserve its own identity, ideological position, organisational strength, political role and public image. It wants to remain the BJP rather than gradually becoming indistinguishable from the Trinamool Congress. This concern is also reflected in the thinking of the state leadership.
A senior BJP leader has argued that the party wants to depend on its own organisation, leaders and workers, particularly because this is the first municipal election after the BJP came to power in West Bengal. Many BJP workers have spent years fighting against the TMC, and some have even lost their lives in that political conflict. Therefore, suddenly joining hands with former TMC leaders could send the wrong message to the party’s grassroots workers.
There is also a question of image. The BJP is preparing to campaign against corruption and poor municipal services. If it simultaneously joins hands with former TMC leaders who themselves face allegations of corruption, the BJP knows that voters may ask a very simple question: if these are the people against whom you have been campaigning, then why are you now standing with them? So this is not merely an issue of seat adjustment. It is also about political credibility.
The second reason is the question of candidates and political ownership. The TMC has many sitting councillors and local leaders who may want tickets this time as well. There are also sons and daughters of MPs and MLAs who may be interested in contesting. If they contest as BJP candidates, they have to formally join the BJP and accept the BJP identity. But if the BJP had entered into an adjustment with a breakaway TMC group, these leaders could potentially have retained their TMC identity while contesting through that arrangement. The BJP does not want to provide that convenience.
The party may selectively bring some people into the BJP and give them tickets, but then they will contest as BJP candidates. The BJP already has its own organisation and its own people. Why should the party make it easier for former TMC leaders to secure political space without accepting the BJP’s organisational identity? That is the second important reason.
The third reason is anti-incumbency and the urban vote. The BJP came to power riding on a strong anti-incumbency sentiment against the Mamata Banerjee government. The urban vote was particularly important in that election. Kolkata is therefore a crucial test.
If the BJP now enters into an electoral adjustment with a section of former TMC leaders, how will the anti-incumbent Bengali voter interpret that decision? The BJP has to ask itself whether such an arrangement would dilute the very political message on which it built its recent electoral success.
So these are the three principal reasons behind the BJP’s decision to go alone.
The Big Picture
There is also a larger electoral calculation. The BJP believes that a multi-cornered contest involving the BJP, Mamata Banerjee’s TMC, the NCPI, TMC rebels, the Left and the Congress could actually work in its favour. Instead of consolidating all anti-BJP or anti-TMC votes into one bloc, the division among several parties could give the BJP an advantage.
At the same time, the reorganisation of the municipal wards has changed the entire political map. Kolkata’s wards are proposed to increase from 144 to 209, while Howrah’s wards are proposed to rise from 50 to 68. This is not merely a numerical change. It can alter voter distribution, booth-level organisation, the social composition of individual wards and the prospects of sitting councillors. It also creates space for many new political faces.
The BJP therefore sees the municipal election as more than just another local poll. It is also an organisational test. The party wants to know how strong its booth-level machinery has become after coming to power in the state.
The campaign itself is likely to focus heavily on ordinary urban issues regarding roads, drainage, waste management, drinking water, street lighting and infrastructure. In Kolkata, the BJP is expected to make corruption in the municipal administration another major issue. The party’s argument is that people should get a corruption-free civic administration rather than a system dominated by political and administrative networks.
This is important because the BJP now has to prove that its Assembly victory can be converted into an urban organisational and electoral presence.
The NCPI, however, continues to keep the door open for an alliance. Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar has argued that NCPI is a major constituent of the BJP-led NDA and therefore expects to contest the civic elections as part of that alliance. The party has not completely abandoned the possibility of an electoral understanding with the BJP.
But the Bengal BJP is clearly saying an alliance in Delhi does not automatically mean an alliance in Kolkata.
That is the real political message behind the BJP’s “Ekla Chalo” strategy. For the BJP, this election is not simply about how many councillors it can win. It is about whether it can build its own political organisation in Bengal without depending on former TMC leaders, while simultaneously retaining the anti-TMC political identity that brought it to power.
The Kolkata and Howrah civic polls will therefore be an important test of whether the BJP can convert its Assembly victory into a durable urban political base. And this is why, despite the expectations of NCPI and the possibility of political adjustments, the BJP appears determined to say one thing clearly: in Bengal, for the civic polls, they will walk alone.
