The year is 50 BC, and all Gaul is occupied. Only one small village… still holds out…. But how much longer can Asterix, Obelix and their friends resist the mighty Roman legions of Julius Caesar?

Replace 50 BC with the year 2025, Gaul with India,village with state, Asterix and Obelix with Mamata Banerjee & Co, and you have a contemporary political tale.

With the fall of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi, Bengal remains the prized cherry that is yet to fall into Julius Caesar’s – read Narendra Modi’s – lap, despite the humongous efforts made by the Romans – read the BJP – since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Past elections have shown that Mamata Banerjee holds the magic potion that makes the Trinamul invincible. But the mighty BJP is determined to buck the trend in next year’s Assembly polls.

Why the Bengal BJP has a spring in its step

Since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP has been steadily polling around 2 crore votes in Bengal, which has given the party the semblance of a steady vote bank irrespective of the number of seats that it has won.

Most Bengal BJP functionaries believe the time is ripe in Bengal for another round of poriborton (change), this time in their favour, with the key being help from 7 per cent of the voters. And the party wants to focus more on the M-word – misrule – rather than the P – polarisation – card as the Assembly poll approaches.

“Our main focus is on the misrule of Mamata in the three terms that she has been in power,” said a Bengal BJP general secretary.

He cited the issues of law and order, women’s safety, the inability of the Mamata Banerjee government to create jobs and corruption as the main poll planks that the party will focus on in the coming months.

“We will play up the anti-incumbency factor. The Trinamul government has failed in every aspect. People can see for themselves what has been happening in the state in the last 13 years. Plus, there is the issue of Bangladesh. If the situation there remains volatile we believe it will have an impact.”

The senior Bengal BJP functionary did sound a note of caution on the cross-border situation.

“Right now we don’t want to focus too much on Bangladesh. Rather we would highlight the ills of the incumbent government,” he said.

In the last Lok Sabha elections, the difference between the BJP and the Trinamul in terms of vote share in Bengal was 7.03 per cent. The BJP received 38.73 per cent of the votes while the Trinamul – which improved its tally – bagged 45.76 per cent votes.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Trinamul polled 43.7 per cent of the votes while the BJP got 40.6 per cent.

“Our vote share in the last three elections would have been enough to form the government in any other state,” said Dilip Ghosh, former MP and former Bengal BJP president.

It was under Ghosh’s leadership that the BJP performed its best in Bengal, winning 19 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and 77 in the 2021 Assembly election.

Ghosh cited the example of Uttar Pradesh in 2017, when the BJP formed the government winning 312 of the 384 seats with a vote share 39.67 per cent.

“The electoral field is so heavily polarised in Bengal that the difference [between Trinamul and the BJP] seems huge. Gradually the people of Bengal are warming up to the BJP. Election strategy and organisational strength apart, if the people want a change there will be change,” Ghosh said.

AAP’s vote share in the Delhi Assembly election, the result of which was declared on February 8, came down by 10 per cent, while the BJP and the Congress gained around 7.05 per cent and 2.08 per cent respectively.

Incidentally, in the year of the big poriborton in Bengal, 2011, the then-incument CPM’s vote share had dropped by 7.05 per cent.

Bengal BJP spokesperson Dr Shatorupa said they were going to the people listing the Trinamul government’s decisions that have adversely affected the people of Bengal.

“We are telling the people how the state government’s bypassing central schemes is depriving them. Like free soil testing and crop insurance for the farmers. The state government is not even willing to give the people the option of selecting a scheme of their choice like with Aayushman Bharat,” she said.

“When we talk about the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh, we are not saying that UP has become crime-free. We are highlighting the difference in the attitude of both the state governments in dealing with crime.”

She also spoke about corruption that has been a bane of the Trinamul with several of its ministers and leaders being put behind bars over the last 10 years.

From the 2016 Assembly election onwards, the entire Opposition in Bengal, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have highlighted corruption – the Saradha scam, the Narada sting operation and the collapse of an under-construction flyover in North Kolkata, to name a few.

But everything has fallen flat with Mamata capitalising on her doles and welfare scheme delivery mechanism to shield the failures of her government. That, many believe, is her magic potion.

Tathagata Roy, a former president of the Bengal BJP, believes only playing the Hindu card will help the party win Bengal.

“Mamata has a steady support of the 35 per cent Muslim voters. That vote is not going anywhere. The arguments that we throw at her on the economic front will have counter-arguments. Consolidation of the Hindu votes is the only way for the BJP to come to power in Bengal,” Roy said.

“The Hindus in Bengal are really in danger.”

BJP Bengal’s task: Organise

Within the BJP organisation, too, there are rumblings. The current state president, Sukanta Majumdar, is also a junior Union minister. A BJP insider said the much-awaited organisational reshuffle will happen soon with a decision on who would lead the party into next year’s Assembly polls.

Leader of Opposition in the Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari is the most prominent face from the BJP in Bengal and would have been the ideal to take charge ahead of the Assembly polls, but holding dual positions in the BJP is discouraged although not unprecedented. For example, in Modi and Amit Shah’s home state Gujarat, the BJP is headed by Union minister C.R. Patil.

A section of the BJP is wary of Adhikari, because he traces his political roots to the Congress and while in Trinamul was a key confidant of Mamata till they fell out in 2020.

While Adhikari did defeat Mamata from Nandigram in the Assembly election and also engineered defections from the Trinamul to the BJP, most of the turncoats have returned home, leaving a question mark on Adhikari.

Majumdar, who had replaced Ghosh in 2021, has not been able to make any dent to improve the BJP’s position in the state. Many feel the party ended up giving space to the marginalised CPM during the protests against the rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital last August.

The membership drive launched by the BJP in Bengal with a target of adding 1 crore new members fell far short of the target, which had to be revised. The BJP’s Bengal minder, Sunil Bansal, had to instruct the BJP functionaries not to fudge figures.

“Even in 2019, when we had our best results, did we have the organisational strength to put agents in even 25 per cent of the booths? No. The Trinamul’s organisation grew after it came to power in 2011. Things will change for us when the perception towards the party changes. That needs time,” said a BJP functionary.

The BJP Bengal’s in-charge for media and election commission, industrialist Shishir Bajoria, said he was optimistic about the BJP’s chances.

“The membership drive has rejuvenated our karyakartas [cadres]. They have reached out to the people and despite the negative press that the membership drive received we achieved our target. To win Bengal, the route is through gram bangla [rural Bengal],” Bajoria said on phone from London.

“We are walking on that path.”