IT WOULD have been a real surprise if Trinamool Congress supremo Ms. Mamata Banerjee had not lost her election from the Bhabanipur Legislative constituency to her arch rival Mr. Suvendu Adhikari by a big margin of 15,000-plus votes. Over the past 15 years of her arrogant rule, Ms. Banerjee had collected enough negative points to deserve a tight electoral slap on her face -- personally and organisationally. She lost her own election, but also led her party to a stunning defeat in the legislative polls in West Bengal. As Chief Minister, Ms. Banerjee ruled with impunity -- and got rebuffed by the people in the most no-nonsense manner. No other result was expected -- for her and for her party in this battle of ballot. Of course, five years, Ms. Mamata Banerjee had returned to power with fantastic popular support. Pepped up by that, she turned all the more arrogant in her approach to governance -- and thus squandered the opportunity the people had given her to leave behind a mark of greatness.

 

The result -- the defeat -- therefore was all that everybody expected, no matter what many political analysts said in her favour before and during election. Ms. Mamata Banerjee took the people of West Bengal for granted. She treated the Central Government with an unparalleled disdain. She drove away literally thousands of businesses out of West Bengal. She allowed her party’s goons to unleash reign of terror on common people to keep them intimidated. And more importantly, Ms. Mamata Banerjee colluded with anti-national forces to allow illegal entry of countless lakhs of people from neighbouring countries into India. The cumulative effect of all these was that the people were fed up of her misrule. The Bharatiya Janata Party took advantage of exactly that. It appealed to people’s democratic sense and garnered the benefit. It took time, but ultimately, the BJP made it to the pole.