Joania is a small gram panchayat in Nadia district of West Bengal where the CPI(M) has never lost. There has been no land acquisition here and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee hasn’t visited the area for campaigning. But in the recently concluded panchayat elections, the villagers of Joania overwhelmingly voted for the Trinamool Congress.

Mamata Banerjee and her party, which was labeled a non-entity in Bengal politics after the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, have put the CPI(M) on the back foot for the first time.

The results shattered the CPI(M)’s belief that its rural base is impenetrable and that there is no strong opposition force in the state. Mamata also managed to portray herself as the voice against the state government’s land acquisition policy.

The Trinamool Congress won only one Lok Sabha seat compared to six by the Congress and 35 by the Left Front in the 2004 elections in Bengal. CPI(M) party bosses, including Biman Bose, wrote Mamata and her party off. But in the panchayat elections, the Trinamool snatched power in zilla parishads in the CPI(M) bastions of East Midnapur and South 24 Parganas. The Trinamool also won the panchayat samiti and gram panchayat seats in Nadia, North 24 Parganas, Howrah and other districts. The CPI(M) lost the panchayat samiti and gram panchayat seats in Nandigram and Singur, two areas that have been on the boil for the last one year.

So what did Mamata do right this time? The Trinamool fought on its own, maintaining an equal distance from the Congress and the BJP. In the 2001 Assembly elections, Mamata Banerjee entered into a grand alliance with the Congress and in the 2004 parliamentary elections, she tied up with the BJP. This time, she entered into a pre-poll alliance with small parties like the SUCI, the PDCI and the Jamate-Ulema-e-Hind under Siddiqullah Chowdhury. Results show that she managed to get the Muslim vote share, which had eluded her party in previous elections.

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