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Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Rallies across state back CJP

Several protesters gathered at Dadar, Mumbai, on Monday in support of CJP's Delhi protest. Pic: Bhushan Koyande Mumbai: Endorsing the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)’s massive agitation near the Parliament in New Delhi, lakhs of youth, students and social organizations took to the streets with angry protests, marches and demonstrations almost all over Maharashtra on Monday. Opposition parties in the state including the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and...

Rallies across state back CJP

Several protesters gathered at Dadar, Mumbai, on Monday in support of CJP's Delhi protest. Pic: Bhushan Koyande Mumbai: Endorsing the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)’s massive agitation near the Parliament in New Delhi, lakhs of youth, students and social organizations took to the streets with angry protests, marches and demonstrations almost all over Maharashtra on Monday. Opposition parties in the state including the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and Shiv Sena (UBT), along with other smaller outfits either voluntarily joined the protestors or wholeheartedly supported them. The political parties expressed full solidarity with the CJP, flayed the forced hospitalization of environment activist Sonam Wangchuk and expressed anger at the purported undermining of major public examinations beset with multiple leaks of question papers in recent years. The demonstrations attracted thousands of collegians, unemployed youngsters, professionals like lawyers, social activists, civil society members, farmers and others, including a large number of women, as the local police deployed strict security to prevent any untoward incidents. The protestors, carrying banners, placards, the National Tricolour and in some places, copies of the Constitution marched or assembled at various central locations in different cities, including Dadar in Mumbai, respective district headquarters since morning, braving showers or heavy rains in many areas. They ranted anti-government slogans, vociferously demanded the resignation of the Union Education Minister of India Dharmendra Pradhan, seeking what they termed as ‘accountability by those holding public offices’, ‘transparency’, ‘safeguarding their democratic rights’ and ‘mutual dialogue’ to resolve such contentious issues. In some districts, the gatherings also condemned the forcible eviction of Wangchuk to a government hospital two days ago, and lashed out the Delhi Police for lobbing teargas shells and mild lathi-charge on the protestors who reached very close to the Parliament – where the Monsoon Session 2026 opened on Monday. Constitutional Rights Speakers at the venues accused the government of allegedly suppressing the Constitutional right to peaceful protests through high-handed means, warning it could deepen public resentment rather than solving the problems the masses raised. Though the emotionally-charged protests in the state remained largely disciplined and peaceful, in some places like Mumbai, a few demonstrators were detained in the afternoon for not adhering to police directives. In Mumbai, the participants included mostly students, young professionals, retired citizens and civil society groups, while the district-level rallies elsewhere drew significant presence of the local youth, farmers organisations and social activists. The vigorous campaigns were carried out in the capital Mumbai and second capital Nagpur, besides Thane, Palghar, Raigad, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Pune, Nashik, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Nandurbar, Dhule, Jalgaon, Akola, Amravati, Dhule, Ahilyanagar, Solapur, Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara, Beed, Latur, Dharashiv, Jalna, Nanded, Parbhani, Hingoli, Wardha, Chandrapur, Gadchiroli, Gondia, Bhandara, Washim, Yavatmal and Buldhana. Thackeray slams Centre Ex-Chief Minister and SS (UBT) President Uddhav Thackeray took potshots at the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government saying “they can hold talks with Pakistan, but not our youth”. His party MP Sanjay Raut alleged that ‘one word’ by a top judge had sparked a nationwide unrest for the past two months, igniting the youth to question the BJP governments at the Centre and in states. Many irate youngsters told the media that the exam reforms centric campaign has now transformed into a broader nationwide movement for debates on civil liberties, dissent and democratic rights of the citizens, and they would continue till their aims are achieved. Hundreds gather in Nagpur to support CJP Hundreds of students, youth and senior citizens staged an agitation in Nagpur on Monday in support of activist Sonam Wangchuk and the Cockroach Janta Party's protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar, demanding Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation. Chanting anti-government slogans over alleged exam paper leaks, angry demonstrators, including students and senior citizens, gathered at Samvidhan Square and vowed to press ahead with their agitation until the education minister steps down. Protesters expressed outrage over the forcible removal of Wangchuk from Jantar Mantar in the national capital and the lathi-charge on students during their march to Parliament. Holding placards, banners and photos of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, demonstrators gathered at the site amid heavy police deployment. One of the young demonstrators said that their agitation will continue till the education minister resigns.

Fraying Stitch

West Bengal’s Chief Minister built her rule on minority consolidation. Ahead of a hotly-contested Assembly poll, the seams are coming apart.

West Bengal
West Bengal

For more than a decade Mamata Banerjee has ruled West Bengal by mastering a simple political arithmetic: consolidate Muslim voters, scatter the opposition and frame every election as a ‘civilisational’ stand-off with the Bharatiya Janata Party. That formula delivered landslides in 2016 and 2021 and turned the Trinamool Congress (TMC) into the state’s natural party of power. But ahead of the coming Assembly elections, that arithmetic is beginning to wobble. The emergence of Muslim-led outfits exploring a united front speaks volumes about what Mamata Banerjee has reduced Bengal’s politics to.


Humayun Kabir, a suspended TMC MLA and the man behind the construction of a Babri Masjid replica along a national highway in Murshidabad, has floated a new party, the Janata Unnayan Party, and is openly urging Muslims to break with the TMC. He has found common cause with Naushad Siddiqui’s Indian Secular Front (ISF), rooted in the influential Furfura Sharif shrine, which has called for an alliance against both the TMC and the BJP. Talks are reportedly under way with smaller outfits, including the SDPI, the political wing of the banned Popular Front of India.


For years Mamata Banerjee positioned herself as the sole credible guardian of Muslim interests. Welfare schemes, symbolic gestures and a relentless anti-BJP rhetoric cemented her image as a bulwark against majoritarian politics. Muslims, roughly 27 per cent of Bengal’s population, rewarded her handsomely in districts where they form decisive blocs. In Malda, the TMC’s vote share jumped from single digits in 2011 to a majority a decade later. In Murshidabad, it rose even more dramatically. Together, these districts became pillars of Trinamool dominance.


Yet it is precisely in these belts that the TMC now looks most exposed. Many seats were won in 2021 by margins slim enough to be overturned by a modest 5–7 percentage-point split in the minority vote. A fractured Muslim electorate would not hand power to the BJP overnight, but it could turn comfortable victories into knife-edge contests and complicate Mamata Banerjee’s path to a fourth term.


The deeper story is not electoral mathematics but political exhaustion. The churn among Muslim voters has been fuelled by a growing sense that the TMC’s minority politics has curdled into tokenism. The controversy over the removal and reclassification of OBC groups, amendments to the Waqf law, and the state’s habit of reactive governance have created unease.


Mamata Banerjee’s style of rule has aggravated the problem. Power in Bengal has been personalised to an extreme, dissent criminalised and local strongmen indulged so long as they deliver votes. This has produced a politics where identity entrepreneurs thrive.


Meanwhile the BJP’s leadership has intensified organisational efforts, drafted ‘Prabasi’ leaders from across India and scheduled high-profile visits by national figures. Yet the BJP’s challenge in Bengal remains structural as its appeal still polarises more than it persuades. Mamata Banerjee continues to exploit fears over citizenship laws, migrant detentions and electoral roll revisions to rally minorities behind her.


That is precisely the tragedy of Bengal’s politics. After 14 years of Trinamool rule, the state is poorer in ideas and thinner in institutions. What should have been a decade of renewal after Left Front stagnation has yielded instead a brittle regime dependent on fear. The rise of Muslim-led outfits is not a sign of healthy pluralism but a sign that politics has been reduced to identity bargaining in a vacuum of governance.


Whether or not Banerjee is dethroned this time, she certainly is being challenged in a big way for the first time since 2011 -and that too from within the very constituency that sustained her rise. That alone is an indictment. Bengal, once a crucible of ideas, now offers a narrower spectacle of a ruling party that mistook crude consolidation for consent. It is discovering that loyalty purchased through polarisation rarely endures.

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