'Bengal sends PM Modi a huge wake up call'

Mamata Banerjee looks set to win a third term as the votes are counted for the state elections.

Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress has crossed the halfway mark in early leads in Bengal though the BJP seems to have made gains since the 2019 national elections.

Here is how the Indian analysts are analyzing West Bengal outcome -

Bengal sends PM Modi a huge wake up call

In a blog piece on the NDTV by journalist Aunindyo Chakravarty, titled, "Bengal sends PM Modi a huge wake up call", the author deemed the West Bengal state polls as national election for India; and added that if the polls hadn't taken place this year, the Modi government would give more attention to the Covid crisis.

The opening lines of the opinion piece read as: West Bengal's was a national election. For the past one year, Team Modi-Shah threw all their weight into winning the state. Some say that if Bengal hadn't voted this year, we might have seen more governmental attention to the Covid crisis. Having used up all its political oxygen on the state, it was imperative that the BJP won West Bengal.

"As it turns out, not only did the BJP not manage to consolidate on its 2019 gains, it failed to even hold on to that vote share. This is the exact opposite of what the Trinamool managed in 2011. The Trinamool's alliance with the Congress party had put up a massive challenge to the Left two years before that in the Lok Sabha elections of 2009. It created a sort of bandwagon-effect, giving fence-sitters the confidence to switch to Mamata in the 2011 assembly polls," Chakravarty added.

It was BJP who made it Mamata vs Modi. Too far

Indian journalist Swati Chaturvedi, in an opinion piece on the NDTV, said Mamata will be Chief Minister of West Bengal, after defeating the BJP in a thriller of an election.

"Mamata Banerjee will be Chief Minister of West Bengal again - for a historic third time - after defeating the BJP in a thriller of an election," the opening lines of the opinion piece read.

She argues that the BJP had made it Mamata vs Modi; adding that not only has Mamata Banerjee  trumped the Nadrendra Modi but she is the only woman Chief Minister in the country and very much in a league of her own.

Why RSS has reason to enjoy Mamata's Bengal win

Author and editor of Satyahindi.com, Ashutosh in his opinion piece on the NDTV, titled, "Why RSS has reason to enjoy Mamata's Bengal win" said that Mamata's win will anguish Modi, but will make RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat happy. He argues that Mamata Banerjee reciting the Chandi Path and calling herself a Brahmin girl would have certainly gladdened Mohan Bhagwat's heart.

"The result of the West Bengal election will cause anguish to Modi but make Mohan Bhagwat happy. This may sound intriguing to many, but those who understand the ideology of the RSS will accept my submission. Modi and BJP are political entities. Their endgame is winning elections, forming governments. But for the RSS, capturing power is not the ultimate goal, it is to make India a Hindu society. Their target is to raise Hindu consciousness and make every Hindu realise that they are a proud Hindu," he writes. 

National impact of the Bengal elections

Political commentator Swapan Dasgupta, who is also a a BJP candidate in the West Bengal assembly elections, wrote an opinion piece on the Hindustan Times, tiltled, "National impact of the Bengal elections". 

Dasgupta said , "no assembly election in recent times has attracted as much attention as the recent exercise in West Bengal."

"No assembly election in recent times has attracted as much attention as the recent exercise in West Bengal. For a state that has, since 1977, alternated between 34 years of uninterrupted Left Front rule and 10 years of a government led by the mercurial Mamata Banerjee, this eastern corner of India has quite abruptly been posited as a barometer of India's future politics. With Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah, not to mention the entire national leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), throwing their entire weight behind the party's challenge, the outcome on May 2 seems calculated to reverberate nationally—although in ways no one is entirely sure about," the opening remarks of his opinion piece read.