With Mamata Banerjee playing her cards well her party Trinamool Congress may just scrape through in the coming elections notwithstanding a visible anti-incumbency wave blowing against her “corrupt and authoritarian” regime, an opinion poll says.
A Bangla television survey has predicted a comfortable 182 seats for the Trinamool Congress out of a total 294.
The comfort factor notwithstanding the Trinamool Congress might just win by a wafer-thin margin in many seats. In terms of overall votes polled a mere one per cent margin may segregate the winners and the losers.
This has become more true after the Thursday’s CPI(M) central committee meeting which has made the chances of a left-Congress alliance brighter.
In case of an alliance the opposition may get 107 seats leaving five seats for the “others.” BJP which has two lok Sabha seats may not be able to open an account, the survey says. The saffron party may shed about 10 per cent votes to remain satisfied with just about 6 per cent vote share.
While the Trinamool is likely to get 44 percent votes the Alliance (if it happens) may get 43 per cent votes.
But what is keeping the ruling outfit edgy is the fact that a bare one per cent of vote will make a difference in as many as 75 seats.
“As the survey was conducted before the CPI(M) central committee meeting and as the election tempo has not started at this point of time a big push from the Opposition may give Trinamool a big blow” said Abdul Mannan a senior Pradesh Congress leader.
“Seventy five seats means 38 seats and one per cent vote means half percent vote because if we are able to shift that half per cent then the two sides will be on equal footing and our chances of coming to power will brighten” said a CPI(M) State secretariat member and a former Minister assuming that an Alliance is just a matter of time.
The survey was conducted across 103 constituencies with a sample size of 12,569 voters.
The survey also says that if there is no alliance between the Congress and the left then the former may end up getting 16 seats while the left may clinch 74. In the second event also the BJP is unlikely to open an account the survey says. In case of no alliance the Trinamool will retain its 44 percent vote share while the left will get 37 per cent vote whereas the Congress and the BJP will get about 6 per cent each, the survey predicts.
Interestingly the Trinamool had polled 39.75 per cent votes in 2014 General elections while the left had polled 30 per cent votes while the BJP and the Congress had got 16.5 per cent and 10 per cent respectively.
Interestingly the survey leaves a question mark on where the BJP’s vote would go if it sheds 10 per cent vote share from what it got in 2014.
Though none would like to hazard a guess some expert take resort to simple arithmetic saying four per cent of the votes polled by the BJP will go to the Trinamool while six per cent may return to the left.
On the reason behind the BJP’s falling vote share a senior CPI(M) leader requesting anonymity said “they in 2014 there was a strong wave in favour of Narendra Modi which has subsided greatly by now. But more importantly a big section of BJP voters are unsatisfied by the way the Saradha and other chit fund scams were handled by the CBI.”
“A quick and meaningful probe could have been a key to BJP’s success in Bengal. At least the people had expected that. By not doing so the BJP seems to have lost its advantage in the State,” said BN Chakrabarty a sephologist.