KOLKATA: As West Bengal witnessed a landslide victory by the BJP against the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress on Monday, senior party leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah has emerged as the master strategist of the historic win.
The BJP is set to win over 200 seats while the TMC has been reduced to just 83 seats as counting of votes progressed for the Assembly elections.
Shah's highly methodical booth-level organisation network, series of night-long meetings with state leaders of the BJP and election campaigning beginning as early as January, have made him the central figure who spearheaded the crucial victory for the party.
Apart from the party's expected electoral performance in northern Bengal, Shah is believed to be the leadership force behind the BJP's electrifying rise in the south Bengal districts, from Purulia to Kolkata, which were traditional strongholds of the Trinamool Congress.
Targeting Bengal much before the election dates were declared on March 15, Shah had started organisational overhauling in the state's BJP unit.
On December 31 last year, Shah set an ambitious target for the Bengal BJP unit, asking it to win a minimum of 20 assembly seats under four Lok Sabha constituencies: Dum Dum, Kolkata North, Kolkata South and Jadavpur.
The BJP has not won a single assembly seat in these four parliamentary constituencies in the Assembly elections since 2016.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the saffron party had marginal leads in only two seats --Jorashanko and Shyampukur-- out of the total 28 Assembly segments coming under the four parliamentary constituencies.
This election witnessed the BJP establishing clear leads in many of the assembly constituencies coming under the Dum Dum, Kolkata North, Kolkata South and Jadavpur Lok Sabha constituencies.
Political observers said that the BJP's strategy this time was sharper, deeper yet far less rhetorical than in 2021 when it had allegedly turned intensely personal, and backfired.
Slogans like "Didi O Didi" and "Pishi Jao" dominated BJP rallies in 2021, which were slammed by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who also converted it into political capital.
However, for this elections, the BJP focused its campaign on alleged corruption, scams, lawlessness, infiltrations, unemployment and women security concerns under the TMC government. The party also consolidated Hindu votes using the anti-incumbency sentiments.
Shah was hardly found making any personal attacks against Mamata this time.
Addressing a gathering after the filing of nominations for the BJP's Suvendu Adhikari early in April, Shah had announced that he would stay in the state for 15 days for campaign works.
Shah had addressed over 30 rallies since the announcement of the elections in the state and held regular meetings till midnight with party leaders in a city hotel at New Town.
He also focused and worked on seats, where the winning margin between the TMC and the BJP was comparatively less.
The West Bengal Assembly elections were held in two phases on April 23 and 29, under the shadow of the controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which led to the deletion of over 90 lakh voters from the state's electoral list.