Jungle Mahal — comprising four Bengal districts with 40 Assembly seats where the BJP had established significant leads in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls — has played a major role in the massive mandate that helped the Trinamul Congress storm to power in Bengal for the third time in a row.
Trinamul won 28 of the 40 Assembly seats in the Jungle Mahal this time, dashing the hopes of the BJP in a region where the party had taken lead in 31 Assembly segments in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The Jungle Mahal is dominated mostly by adivasis and those belonging to the Scheduled Caste and other backward castes.
The 40 Assembly seats in the Jungle Mahal are spread across four districts — Purulia, Bankura, Jhargram and West Midnapore.
Sources attributed Trinamul’s comeback in the Jungle Mahal to schemes like pension for thousands of elderly and physically challenged people and the party’s campaign to showcase the BJP as one that tried to amend the land rights act of the tribal people. Trinamul also exploited the people’s anger against the arrogance of BJP leaders and workers in the areas where it runs gram panchayats or panchayat samitis.
The change in leadership and bringing in Chhatradhar Mahato in the Jungle Mahal also helped Trinamul strengthen its organisation in the region.
“People did not trust the BJP because of false assurances given by the party after it started winning power in the region’s panchayats since 2018. The attitudes of the BJP leaders made the poor people in our areas angry. The tribal people became worried about protecting their rights to land and forest as the BJP tried to amend the Chottanagpur Tenancy Act (CNT) and Santhal Parganas Tenancy (SPT) Act in the neighbouring Jharkhand,” said Dulal Murmu, the Trinamul president in Jhargram.
Sources said Duare Sarkar drive by which Trinamul reached out to the rural people mainly with its old age pension of Rs 1,000 for SC and ST communities and Swasthya Sathi (health insurance) had played a big role in Trinamul winning back people ahead of the polls.
“It is a poor area and such benefits towards the people helped us a lot. People understood that the Mamata Banerjee government was working for them when the BJP was busy campaigning for polarisation in the region,” said a Trinamul leader.
Trinamul insiders said the BJP-run Jharkhand government had tried to change the British-formulated CNT-SPT Act in 2016 to enable sale of land belonging to adivasis. The Jharkhand government had wanted to amend the act to facilitate private players to buy tribal land for setting up their businesses.
“The issue played a major role in the BJP’s defeat in the 2019 Jharkhand Assembly polls. In Bengal, Trinamul had exploited the issue and managed to convince the tribal community about the BJP’s agenda to snatch their rights to land, water and forest,” said Opel Mandi, state convener of the Bharat Jakat Majhi Pargana Mahal.
In July last year, Trinamul had reshuffled its organisation in the four Jungle Mahal districts that Trinamul leaders considered a proper step to take the ride to grab the region which was once the stronghold of the party.
Trinamul changed all the four district presidents and included former Trinamul MP from Purulia Mriganka Mahato in the 21-member committee in the state. Chhatradhar Mahato, the face of the Lalgarh movement, was included in the party’s state committee.
“The earlier leaders were replaced with those whom the people identified with tribal movement in the region. The organisational restructuring worked,” said a Trinamul leader.
In districts like Purulia and Jhargram, BJP runs around 70 gram panchayats and four panchayat samitis which they won in the 2018 panchayat polls. Sources said the experience of the people of the Jungle Mahal in dealing with BJP leaders made them angry.
Bidyasagar Chakrabarti, the BJP president in Purulia, however, said the reason behind “poor performance” would be investigated by the party.
“There could be many reasons but we need time for post-mortem,” said Chakrabarti.
