The state awaits the results with hope and fear — for this election will change everything for everyone.
Mamata Banerjee’s house in Kalighat is being readied for a celebration. No one will sleep tonight, and tomorrow, when the results of Assembly elections in West Bengal start pouring out, around 4.30 pm is the time fixed for Banerjee’s press conference, such is the belief that she will form the government in West Bengal, singalling the end of more than three decades of communist-rule in the state.
But Alimuddin Street, where the offices of the Left parties are located, will not sleep tonight either, for it is convinced the people of West Bengal will give it another chance. Though the Left Front has been struggling to beat anti-incumbency for a decade now, it has never seen a “wave” this strong, whether against it or for its serious challenger Mamata Banerjee. Exit polls have clearly suggested a rout for the Left Front but for the Left, exit poll figures are meaningless.
Left Front Chairman Biman Bose claims they will get 199 of the 294 constituencies.(PARTYWISE POLLING PERCENTAGE IN LAST POLLS)
The election is crucial for the people of West Bengal, for it is their fate that hangs in balance. The core issue is the new government’s attitude to industrialisation. Will Mamata Banerjee translate her Ma Mati Manush (Motherland, earth, human dignity) slogan into resisting and preventing transfer of land for industrialisation of West Bengal without which the state has little hope for a better life for the people? Or will the Left Front, if it comes to power, correct the wrongs of Singur and Nandigram and explain to the people, the benefits of selling land to industry, badly fragmented as it is? Regardless of who wins, there are worries about violence on a scale the state has not seen since the 1970s. Above all, the election represents for the people of West Bengal a new way of looking at things, with an opposition almost as strong and vocal as the ruling party. There is an additional worry. If Mamata Banerjee does become CM, what will be her relationship with the Congress, which is a TMC ally in the centre ? If relations are volatile, what will this mean for politics in West Bengal? And stability in the state ?