West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is facing a do-or-die battle in the Bengal assembly elections that were held in eight phases and votes are being counted today. Banerjee, who scripted history by uprooting the three-decade-old regime of the Left Front is once again on the threshold of a watershed moment as the BJP, this time, is on the other side of the ring and challenging the chief minister.

If exit polls are to be believed then Mamata has an edge but the challenger BJP is not far behind. The result – A tight contest.

What works in Mamata Banerjee’s favour is her ‘Bengali pride’ poll plank, which often works in the state like West Bengal, and lack of a chief ministerial face in the rival camp. On the flip side, Didi’s – as Mamata is often referred to – top men switched sides and joined the BJP.

For Mamata Banerjee, stakes are high as losing the elections might put a question mark on her leadership and the very existence of her “ideology starved” party in the state and at the national level. On several occasions, Mamata Banerjee acted as catalysts in bringing together the fragmented opposition in a “collective fight” against the BJP.

The win, however, would place the 66-year-old leader in the league of leaders who have managed to halt the Modi juggernaut. But if the TMC loses this electoral battle (stakes are too high and this was visible in the desperation with which Mamata Banerjee asked for votes) it would mean that Bengal has rejected her “beti” because she could not bring the “poriborton” in the state and instead got busy with “Khela Hobe”. The verdict of 2021 will reflect the result of 2011, when Bengal rejected the Left and chose Mamata for development.And the onus of this defeat will be the most on Mamata Banerjee, who symbolised the historic change that Bengal saw 10 years earlier.

It could be a blow that the political career of the chief minister might not survive, who is fighting on her individual credibility despite several corruption charges against her party. She has often been accused of running a family business by her colleagues, who switched to the BJP because they “lost confidence” in Mamata Banerjee. Once Mamata confidante and now her opponent in Nandigram, Suvendu Adhikari alleged that Mamata has given a free hand to her nephew Abhishek Banerjee to run the party. The defeat would throw a bigger challenge at the TMC supremo, holding on to her party.

What happens to Bengal politics?

If the TMC loses this election, there is every possibility of Bengal’s politics getting fragmented further. And if this happens, the “asal poriborton (real change)” will reflect in the state’s political alignments.

Bengal’s politics has seen far too long rules -Congress (1947-67, 1972-77), the Left Front (1977-2011), and TMC (2011-till now). Bengal has been a politically stable state but if Mamata Banerjee loses this election, it will be a change of guard far too quickly by the state’s standard.

The result

The emergence of a fresh political pattern, good or bad not sure but will have a rattling impact on the state’s socio-political life.