Why Modi’s move to mock Mamata may backfire for the BJP

Perhaps Narendra Modi finally tired of Mamata Banerjee's public snubs, because he tore into her government in West Bengal with an enthusiasm West Bengal's BJP cadre has not seen before.

Narendra Modi. Reuters.

For a state that sent just one member to the Lok Sabha in 2009 (Jaswant Singh), Modi took a rather bold step in mocking Mamata. The state's 42 LS seats could be a critical gap for Modi's Mission 272.

"Give me all your seats," he told the gathered crowd, "and we will have a contest to see whether a BJP-led Central government does more for West Bengal or the state government."

The BJP is also completely absent in the state's Legislative Assembly. The 294-member Assembly is now dominated by the Trinamool Congress. In 2006, they contested 26 seats of these 294 and won none. In 2011, they contested all 294 seats. And again returned a zero-win result. In effect, the BJP is nearly non-existent in the West Bengal polity.

Given that Modi's Prime Ministerial dreams hinge on some extent on his performance in states where the BJP has no presence, the Gujarat CM may have been better advised had he remain patient. An opinion poll conducted by CSDS for the Lokniti-IBN poll tracker suggested that even compared to last year, a greater percentage of people approve of the present Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal.

Thirty nine percent of the respondents said that they prefer the current TMC government, as opposed to 30 percent who said that the Left government was better. And, of the people giving a thumbs up to the Mamata Banerjee government, 54 percent are Muslims. In fact, Muslim support for the TMC seems to have gone up in the recent past sharply -- just 39 percent of respondents who preferred the TMC government in 2013 were Muslims. That statistic is reason enough to suggest that wooing Mamata will be crucial for any party hoping to grab a sizeable number of Lok Sabha seats from West Bengal.

Doubtless, the BJP's popularity is on a slow rise, thanks mostly to apparent faith in Modi being the best man for the country's top job. The poll showed BJP's estimated vote share up to 14 percent now from 12 percent last year.

But the Trinamool Congress still has nearly triple the vote share, at 33 percent. There is a rider to that -- eighteen percent of the respondents believed that Narendra Modi was a better Prime Ministerial candidate than Mamata, who got eleven percent votes.  (Read more here)

However, if that opinion is enough to convince them to vote for the BJP remains to be seen.