India election: How Trinamool Congress went back to drawing board, fended off formidable BJP

In her 40-year political career, Mamata Banerjee has fought 10 Lok Sabha campaigns, first painstakingly carving out a space for herself as a young Congress leader, breaking out with her own party Trinamool Congress in 1998, then smashing through the Left citadel in 2011 on the back of a potent grassroots campaign in Singur and Nandigram, and finally contending with the rising Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), once her ally, over the last decade.

But the 2024 poll campaign would surely count among her toughest as the TMC faced an energised and well-resourced BJP keen to avenge its 2021 assembly poll loss.

The BJP believed it had all the ingredients to become the single-largest party in a state it has historically struggled in – the party had already built the foundation in 2019 when it won 18 seats, established its fiefs in the western and northern parts of the state and projected a batch of Bengali leaders to blunt the TMC's claim of it being an outfit of outsiders.

On the other side, the Opposition appeared to be in disarray. With weeks to go for the polls, Banerjee unilaterally declared all 42 candidates and broke ranks with the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) in the state.

Allegations of exploitation and sexual abuse by TMC men swirled in Sandeshkhali and gave the BJP a potent handle to target the regional party's biggest asset – women voters.

The BJP's overt communal rhetoric hurled allegations of Muslim appeasement at TMC. And adverse orders by the Calcutta high court underlined sweeping corruption in teachers recruitment, creating resentment among the middle classes and aspirational young people.

And the Union government implemented the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act just weeks before the polls opened.

Rallies and speeches by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah made it clear that the BJP was not content with just the north and the west, it wanted to breach the TMC citadel of south Bengal, which houses its capital Kolkata.

In close circles, senior BJP leadership said it was targeting a premium of 8-10 more seats from the state that sends the third-largest number of parliamentarians to the Lok Sabha.

To counter this, Banerjee and her lieutenant, party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, set out an elaborate strategy on three prongs.

One, focus on organisation and candidate selection.

With an iron hand, she sorted out the party's infamously factional organisation and ensured minimal infighting by declaring candidates early and in one go. She chose fresh faces such as Coochbehar candidate, one-time MLA Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia, Hoogly candidate, Bengali actor Rachana Banerjee and Baharampur candidate, cricketer Yusuf Pathan. Both ended up defeating heavyweight sitting MPs, Union minister of state Nisith Pramanik, senior BJP leader Locket Chatterjee and Congress Lok Sabha floor leader Adhir Ranjan Choudhury, respectively. By going to every district and holding both organisational and public meetings, she created a clear chain of command. It helped in not only defending the TMC's stronghold in south Bengal but also making inroads in Jangalmahal and north Bengal.

This is important in a state where party structure holds far more importance than in other big provinces because of its outsized role in shaping the everyday life of the people. Hence, organisation is key if a party has to bring the voter to the polling booth. The TMC managed to trump the BJP on this crucial parameter. This ensured that even her riskier gambits – such as junk sitting MP Arjun Singh from Barrackpore or field cricketer Kirti Azad against BJP veteran Dilip Ghosh, who shifted from his home seat of Medinipur to Bardhaman-Durgapur. – paid off.

Two, underline welfare outreach.

In rally after rally, Banerjee rattled off a long list of welfare schemes her government was running, most prominent among them Lokhhir Bhandar, a direct cash benefit scheme that transfers ₹1,000 to every woman's account ( ₹1,200 for scheduled caste and scheduled tribe women) per month. Banerjee not only doubled the quantum of cash from ₹500 to ₹1,000 on the eve of the polls but also told the audience at every rally that if the BJP comes to power, it will stop the scheme with a 21 million-strong catchment, all of them women. In 2021, schemes such as Duare Sarkar and Kanyashree Prakalpa had helped tide over the anti-incumbency wave from 2019. In 2024, Lokhhir Bhandar appeared to have done the trick.

Three, strengthen connection with women and Muslims.

Banerjee course corrected on Sandeshkhali early, pushing the administration to give back land to aggrieved local people and instead pitching the issue as one of Bengali pride. At the same time, she repeatedly harked back to her old relationship with women in her rallies and made sure that Sandeshkhali never became a statewide issue.

She was also careful in nurturing her ties with the Muslim voter, which forms 27% of the state and plays a key role across south Bengal. By frontally attacking the BJP and casting Adhir Choudhury and the Congress as the B-team of Modi, she ensured minimal splintering of the Muslim vote that helped her win otherwise close battles such as Krishnanagar. In Muslim-dominated Basirhat, under which Sandeshkhali falls, she packed off actor Nusrat Jahan and brought back old lieutenant Haji Nurul Islam who won by 300,000 votes. And she effectively fielded old leaders of the party – such as Uluberia MP Sajda Ahmed, wife of veteran leader Sultan Ahmed – to reassure the minority communities.

And four, play on the insider-outsider plank.

Every time Modi or a senior BJP leader raked up a controversy in the heartland over issues such as eating meat or fish, Banerjee brought it back to Bengal and commented on it in her rally. When the BJP celebrated the scrapping of OBC certificates or teachers' appointments, she turned it around by blaming "outsiders" who didn't understand Bengal and were bent on syphoning off their rights and jobs. It helped cast Banerjee as the protector of Bengali rights. She dealt with the CAA issue similarly, casting it as a threat from outsiders who didn't under Bengal's tryst with the freedom struggle and citizenship, successfully limiting the impact of the issue to two seats.

In 2021, she had effectively branded the BJP an outsider force. In 2024, the same template was put to use again and was largely successful. Jono-gorjon: Bangla Birodhider Bishorjon (dump those opposed to Bengal) became her rallying cry.

On Tuesday evening, the results were for all to see. The TMC posted its best tally in 10 years, wresting six seats from the BJP and defeating her bete noire, Choudhury, and restricting her other rival, BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, to just his home district. "This is a victory for Bengal. We respect the love they have shown us," she said.