The much anticipated Lok Sabha elections of 2024 which is slated to begin from 19th April onwards have made political parties across all major spectrums to be extremely busy with high voltage campaigns, roadshows, yatras and many more.
From North to South and East to West, both the ruling and opposition parties have diverse issues in hand to target and counter target their rivals in order to match up with the expectations of the people and lure them to vote in favor of them. However the mandate of 1.4cr Indians from all walks of life as to who shall breach the majority mark can be revealed only on 4th June.
In the meantime, the focus remains on which state shall play a vital role in influencing the Lok Sabha results as each and every seat from a state matters for both NDA as well as I.N.D.I.A bloc in achieving the majority status in the parliament.
It is to be noted that during the Lok Sabha Elections of 2019, the emergence of BJP from the state of West Bengal took everyone by surprise as it managed to win 18 seats (the figure was 2 in 2014) with most of it coming from northern parts of West Bengal and from the Jangalmahal regions. Although the ruling TMC edged past the BJP by winning 22 seats, but it came as a shocker for the latter as to how this result can influence the assembly elections as well as the Lok Sabha Elections of 2024.
The political scenario of West Bengal has now changed drastically with plenty of issues coming into the picture like corruption, ration scams, Sandeshkhali issue, ED Attacks, poll violence etc. With time, political analysts have commented that if Trinamool fails to come up with amicable solutions to bring down the allegations raised by the BJP, CPM & Congress, then this can heavily effect their performance with BJP marching ahead of TMC.
Mamata Banerjee in his speech has claimed several times that the BJP is trying to unleash investigative agencies like CBI, ED , NIA etc to arrest oppostional leaders in the eve of the elections so that BJP can perform better. She has also criticized the role of CPM & Congress in the state for acting as the B-Team of BJP and not raising their voice against them when it comes to arrests made by ED & CBI.
Both the BJP & TMC have made introduced new and popular faces in some crucial seats where we expect tough fight to take place like in Tamluk, Justice Abhijit Ganguly of BJP who was the face of investigating recruitment scam as a Judge of Kolkata High Court is pitted against Debangshu Bhattacharya of TMC.
Similarly in Ghatal, actor Deepak Adhikari (a.k.a Dev) of TMC is fighting against his rival Hiran Chattopadhyay of BJP.
It will be interesting to see which party is going to win from these 2 seats as the winnability prospects are very high for them. Other than that, the BJP is leaving no stones unturned to pitch their campaigns on national issues like Ram Mandir, removal of Article 370, free ration and regional issues like Sandeshkhali issue, corruption, raids by CBI-ED etc. Meanwhile TMC is also prioritizing on issues like Lakshmir Bhandar, blockage of MGNREGA funds, arrest of opposition leaders and communal disharmony in order to maintain their existing support base.
The organizational strength of BJP is another factor that is expected to help them win seats which they consider as their strongholds because anti-TMC voters who used to vote for CPM & Congress at one point of time are now moving towards BJP owing to the former's lack of political presence and concrete leadership. This was one of the reason as to why CPM in the last elections and also during the assembly elections as well.
In 2024, this binary is expected to inflict damage to TMC in areas like Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, Balurghat, Malda Uttar, Bankura, Purulia, Midnapore etc as most of anti TMC votes tend to come from the aforementioned constituency.
Opinion polls conducted by various poll agencies have shown different and conflicting figures but at present it is too tough to predict which political party is going to get the maximum number of seats from West Bengal as political scenario keeps on changing with time and no matter how tough the fight is going to be, if BJP secures the highest no. of seats (18-27) with LF+Cong winning at least 2-3 seats, then the ultimate beneficiary would be BJP since the combined force of CPM+Cong would split votes of TMC and that can influence the Lok Sabha figures to a massive extent.
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