West Bengal election results 2019: Saffron threat may bring the streetfighter out

Mamata Banerjee has faced sterner tests before. But this is the first time after becoming chief minister of Bengal that she will have to contend with an opposition as buoyant and aggressive as she was when she robbed her predecessor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, of his sleep.
Banerjee would be aware of what she faces. Her campaign this time, perhaps for this reason, reflected the streetfighterstyle of politics that she had perfected when she was in the opposition.The Bengal CM dug into the past, addressing 90 election meetings and walking 16 roadshows in the searing May heat over the last eight weeks.
Banerjee’s party can look at the result in two ways. The most obvious — and rankling — would be the possible loss of 18 seats (on the basis of leads till 9pm) to a rival that moves in for the kill given half an opportunity; yet another alarming factor would be the BJP’s cornering 40.3% of the vote share.
But the Bengal CM would probably ask her party colleagues to look at the result a little differently. This result gives her — and her party — a clear look at the opposition. Till May 23, she was fighting the BJP in a few regions, the Congress in a few constituencies and the CPM-led Left Front in the rest of the Bengal. The Left’s shrinking — to the point of near-decimation — has now made it clear that she will have to fight only one foe in Bengal: the BJP.
We may have to go back to one February evening this year to get a hint of what Banerjee’s response now would be. On February 3, when a CBI team visited then Kolkata Police commissioner’s Loudon Street residence, she first went there to marshal her forces and then sat on a dharna at Esplanade East.
This renewed BJP threat may just give us more of the vintage Mamata Banerjee though it remains to be seen how effective it will be in the changed circumstances.