No challenge

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Sangh Parivar have been sworn political enemies. Benefits of this rivalry, it seems, have accrued to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal. This week's edition of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh mouthpiece, Organiser, has a write-up by Kolkata-based journalist Asim Kumar Mitra. The piece is on how the Left parties, despite losing base in the state, are carrying out a "misinformation" campaign that in the 2016 Assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would see its vote share erode by seven percentage points from the 17 per cent it garnered in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Mitra claims the "BJP has emerged as the only party to counter the wrongdoing of the ruling TMC" and that "of late, Mamata (Banerjee) herself has reduced her virulent attack against the (Narendra) Modi government". In the civic polls in May, the Left and the BJP not only struggled to challenge the TMC's dominance, but also competed for the No 2 spot.