ChinmayC Blog

The only political party that is always having the last laughs on the pathetically prolonged Congress dilemma and its manifestations is obviously the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and is greatly advantaged to stage a hat-trick of victory in the 2024 General Elections, even though the biggest national democratic exercise is more than two and half years away. The oldest political party of India, the Indian National Congress (INC or simply Congress), has been suffering consecutive routs in both the General Elections since 2014 and in most of the Assembly Elections in recent times, leading everyone to believe that the only second pan-India party, apart from the BJP since 2014, is caught in the throes of an irreversible decline and fall. It still remains a party bound irrevocably to the Gandhi family, despite the repeated failures of the leadership and internal conflicts led by several veteran Congress leaders called the G-23 demanding a change in leadership and holding organizational...

A stupendous election victory against the might of the national ruling party; Didi Mamata Bannerjee installed for the third term as Chief Minister of  West Bengal; and the immediate promise to take the fight against the COVID-19 virus in its deadly second wave head on. But, in the days that followed the state government had not shown any real intent to take on the promised fight, deciding only to augment a little the earlier state administration order that was announced a day prior to the counting of votes on 2 nd May 2021, to shut down restaurants, cinema halls, malls, gyms, sport complexes and so on, and to schedule the business hours of the general markets.   The order came the very day of the oath-taking ceremony, no doubt a very subdued affair due to the situation, of Mamata Bannerjee as the new Chief Minister; but, unfortunately, the new order yields precious little in terms of strict curbs or a most-preferred complete lockdown. The order follows largely the same format...

All the odds were stacked against her. She was facing the double anti-incumbency factor her party, Trinamul Congress (TMC), having ruled the state of West Bengal for two terms of ten years and herself as Chief Minister; there had been palpable anger against her party for charges of corruption and the lack of development. Then, the national ruling party BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) had its full focus on this state after having conquered the whole of North Eastern region, most of the Eastern and the Northern region; since 2014 when the BJP-led government was established in India with the ideals of aggressive Hindu nationalism and religious polarization, the BJP decided to win over the whole of India, and West Bengal became the epicentre of their expansion plans; the BJP mastered only three seats in the Assembly Elections of West Bengal in 2016, but that increased in a spectacular fashion in the Lok Sabha general elections in 2019 when the BJP captured 18 seats of 42 thus reducing TMC’s s...