Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: “Counting will begin in the morning of May 4. Ballot box will open at 8 am, first round will be over at 9 and second round at 10. Counting will be over at 1 pm and it will be ta ta, good-bye to didi.” Thus spoke Union home minister Amit Shah at one of his rallies in West Bengal on Apr 22, a day before the first phase of polling.As BJP stormed to power in the state, dismantling CM Mamata Banerjee’s stronghold for the past 15 years, Shah’s bold prophecy went viral and so did another assertion that his party will be governing ‘Anga, Banga and Kalinga,’ a cultural reference to Bihar, Bengal and Odisha, after the results were announced on Monday.Also Read |‘Immoral, illegal’: Mamata Banerjee alleges BJP ‘looted’ more than 100 seats; vows to ‘bounce back’The last time one party got to govern the three largest eastern states was Congress in the 70s before it lost Bengal to CPM in the first post-Emergency polls and where it gradually unraveled-a fate that befell the party in other two states as well but across a longer stretch of time.Confident poll claims come naturally to politicians as they rally their supporters and galvanise their cadres in pursuit of victory but the assertion of Shah, the hard-headed election strategist, deft organisation builder and untiring campaigner rolled into one, was no wild shot.He began rebuilding BJP’s ground campaign against TMC just after he took over as the BJP chief. The resolve never waned, not after he left the organisation for govt despite the disappointment in 2021 and below-par performance in Lok Sabha elections when its tally fell from 18 to 12.
During informal conversations, he would often say that Bengal, the birthplace of the founder of Bharatiya Jan Sangh, as BJP was known in its original incarnation, was just as important for him as Uttar Pradesh which he won for the party in 2017. The disappointments only seemed to give more steel to Shah’s determination, to keep trying and improvising his play.This time he stationed himself for 15 days in the hotly contested state and held over 50 public programmes, including 30 rallies and 12 roadshows, addressing press conferences to shape the party’s narrative built on Hindu consolidation against Mamata’ alleged appeasement of Muslims and BJP’s welfare promises, including stipend to women and unemployed youths, to counter her govt’s freebies.Also Read | West Bengal election results 2026: BJP sweeps Mamata’s citadel – who’s in CM race?Union minister and West Bengal poll-in charge Bhupender Yadav and BJP secretary Sunil Bansal, a former RSS functionary who has been handling the party’s organisational affairs in the state since 2022, were key central figures on the ground, giving Shah feedback and being instrumental in executing the campaign.
