Huge voter turnout worrying Trinamul Congress

Approximate vote share of both TMC and Left-Congress head to head at 40%

Huge voter turnouts in the ongoing West Bengal Assembly polls have begun to worry Trinamul Congress strategists. The perception that large voter turnouts generally do not augur well for the ruling party is making the TMC leadership a wee bit jittery.

Adding to this is the uncomfortable arithmetic of the vote share percentage. The approximate vote shares of both Trinamul and the Left-Congress combination stand head to head at 40 per cent. It remains to be seen which way the BJP’s 17 per cent vote share will go. Though the BJP has slipped far behind, the party could open its account in Kharagpur and Asansol. In a bid to woo the considerable Tamil population in Kharagpur, a massive contingent of Tamil RSS functionaries were pressed into operation, sources said.

Coming back to the arithmetic, a senior politician from the state indicated that the Trinamul Congress could not surpass 40 per cent vote share even during its peak. It was further pointed out that while the CPI(M) clocked 30 per cent, the Congress has 10 per cent of the vote share. If the BJP manages to retain 17 per cent of the vote share it could be a close call for the Trinamul, polls experts in Bengal feel.

As for the minority vote bank, a senior Trinamul functionary claimed that the “Muslims won’t leave Didi”. The Congress-Left combination is also equally confident of attracting a large chunk of the Muslim vote bank.

Meanwhile, the Opposition parties in Bengal were adequately pleased with the Election Commission for managing to curb poll violence in the state. The Opposition had been repeatedly accusing TMC cadres of unleashing a reign of terror during elections. The Election Commission’s move to keep TMC strongman Anubrata Mondol out of action in Birbhum on Sunday has also made the Congress-Left hopeful of “scoring well”. The BJP, however, demanded a re-poll in nine Assembly constituencies of Birbhum and submitted a petition at the EC office in the national capital.

What might go against the Congress-Left is lack of leadership. The combination has no leader to match TMC supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. “Regardless of the issue of corruption, Didi remains the TINA factor in Bengal,” a senior party leader said then admitted, reluctantly, “We might come down in numbers and we will still form the government.”