Mamata courts Left as BJP eyes WB

Mamata Banerjee is credited with decimating her arch rival, the Left, in West Bengal. Therefore when she advised the same party to strengthen its ranks to check BJP's rise, she conceded the real threat to Trinamool Congress' supremacy was the saffron surge.
 "BJP workers are grabbing your party offices and raising their flags there," Mamata told a 12-member Left team that met her at her office in Nabanna.
"Many of your party are leaving to join BJP. Manage your own flock…you know my stand on communalism. You must be having a stand, too," she told the team.
In a rare display of warmth toward her rivals, Mamata went out of her way to show courtesy to the Left leaders. She was waiting outside the lift on the 14th floor to greet them.
The chief minister's statements Left political pundits wondering whether she is trying to deliver the message to the Left - so far reckoned as the principal opposition to Trinamool - that BJP is the new opposition in the state.
"If the chief minister has indicated something to the Left, she has done it out of fear. I think BJP will soon become the major political force in Bengal and also the main opposition force. The chief minister has tried to strike common cause with the Left by identifying BJP as the common adversary," said Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay, former principal of Presidency College and a prominent political observer.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, BJP's vote share jumped to 17% from the 6% in 2009. The gain is significant considering its vote share in 2011 assembly polls was only 4%.
Earlier, at the conclusion of its two-day long State Committee meeting on Sunday, BJP's co-observer in West Bengal Siddharth Nath Singh said that his party has decided to take up several programmes to step up its activities in West Bengal.
Claiming that the BJP has “occupied the main opposition space” in the State, he said the strategy to strengthen the party's “booth-level organisation” was discussed at the meeting along with issues such as the Trinamool Congress' increasing violence and “screening process” for those who want to join BJP from other parties.
In a bid to up the ante against the TMC government, the BJP decided to organise protests in every district across the State against “high-level corruption” that allegedly took place in the recruitment of teachers.
The party will also launch a State-wide campaign drive at the block-level to strengthen its mass base by communicating to the people “the development plans for the State taken up by the Centre and the duties which the State government has failed to perform.”
Singh said that the primary aim for the BJP in the State was to create a “TMC-free Bengal in the way prime minister Narendra Modi has almost succeeded in creating a Congress-free India.” BJP's central leadership will also help the party's State unit in this regard.
He claimed that despite having bagged 34 seats in the State, TMC chairperson Mamata Banerjee is “agitated and nervous because not only the Bengali and non Bengali voters in the State but also a substantial portion of Muslim voters have given their mandate in favour of the BJP.”