A section of Bengal BJP is unhappy with the leadership’s inability to encash the discontent among the Kurmis against the Trinamul Congress as the community shows signs of inching closer to chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
Ever since the Kurmis began their agitation earlier this year, the BJP has been trying to exploit the resentment among the community. The party has lost some support base among tribal communities.
With an eye on the Kurmi community, the leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari, on Wednesday, evoked communal sentiments while addressing a crowd in Pingboni in West Midnapore at an event commemorating World Tribal Day.
“The Other Backward Classes of our state are the most affected by the politics of appeasement and corruption, people who are Sanatani (Hindu) OBCs...In West Bengal, 98% of a particular community (Muslims) has been included in the OBC list for electoral politics. The Hindu Kurmi OBCs have thus suffered in the hands of Mamata Banerjee,” Adhikari said.
His statement comes a day after Mamata held two separate meetings with leaders of the tribal and Kurmi communities, which are at loggerheads with each other over the Scheduled Tribe tag.
After the meeting, representatives of both communities publicly heaped praises
on Mamata and pledged that they would maintain peace in Junglemahal as was her request.
For the saffron camp, the reconciliation of the Kurmis with the Trinamul is a lost opportunity since they have failed to politically exploit the discontent that had ignited among the community, which had organised statewide agitation demanding an ST tag for themselves.
Their protest turned violent and Trinamul minister Birbaha Hansda had to face the brunt of the Kurmi ire when her vehicle was attacked in May.
Since then the BJP had tried to reach out to the Kurmis with Adhikari himself taking the lead.
The Nandigram MLA visited the families of Rajesh Mahato, who among several other Kurmi leaders were arrested in connection with the attack on Hansda’s vehicle.
He visited two such families and promised them ration and financial support.
Mahato was one of the Kurmi leaders who met Mamata on Tuesday.
Sources in the BJP said their leaders had failed to bridge a disconnect that the party had suffered with the community since the 2019 polls in which all the Lok Sabha seats, where the Kurmis were a decisive vote, were wrested by them.
“Trinamul has slowly working in these places since then. After Mamata Banerjee returned to power in 2021 she ensured that the financial schemes of her government reach these tribal communities,” a BJP source said.
The leader added: “Later when the Kurmi issue cropped up they handled it wisely by first arresting the leaders and then persuading them to not act violently. Kurmis even fought the panchayat polls independently, which was a blow for us.”
Rumours that the Uniform Civil Code will be passed by the Union government have had an adverse effect on the Kurmis. A group from this community had blocked the bungalow of the BJP’s Midnapore MP a few days back to protest against the impending UCC and violence in Manipur.
Moreover, the Trinamul has to some extent successfully convinced the people in these areas that the violent agitations by the Kurmis are sponsored by the BJP. On Wednesday while addressing a World Tribal Day event at Jhargram Mamata said: “I know a Kurmi leader who appears to be a well-wisher for the community but promotes BJP during the election in exchange for crores of money.”
In 2019, 12 of the 13 seats spreading across these two regions were bagged by the BJP. The saffron camp repeated the magic in North Bengal in 2021 as well, by winning 30 out of the 54 assembly seats. It stumbled a little in Junglemahal but won 13 of the 35 seats.
Two years later in 2023, BJP won only 19 per cent of the total gram panchayat seats that went to poll in these areas. Of the 23,546 total seats in these districts, BJP won only 4459. The Kurmis constitute about 35 per cent of the average vote share in the districts of West Midnapore, Jhargram, Purulia, and Bankura.
“Amidst such a situation our leaders have little option other than to use our biggest tool: the politics of religion,” a state BJP office-bearer said.
Nadda meet
BJP’s national chief J.P. Nadda will participate in a party event at the Science City auditorium on Saturday, where he will address and interact with the BJP workers and supporters who have suffered allegedly at the hands of the Trinamul Congress goons during the rural polls.
BJP’s winning candidates in the rural polls are also likely to be present at the event.He is scheduled to visit the state for a two-day workshop of Zilla Parishad chiefs and deputy chiefs to be held at Kolaghat, East Midnapore.
