The Trinamul Congress has set in motion an exercise to weaken the BJP from the ground up in the Jungle Mahal by engineering en masse defections or ghar-wapsi of elected representatives, taking control of panchayats and freely inducting local BJP workers.
The BJP had won five out of six Lok Sabha seats in 2019, with leads in 31 of the 40 Assembly segments, in the Jungle Mahal which is a vast tribal-dominated region comprising four south Bengal districts.
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But the saffron camp slumped to victories in only 16 of the 40 Assembly seats this summer.
Trinamul has been at work to ensure a lasting turnaround in the 100-odd gram panchayats and half a dozen panchayat samitis run by the BJP in the region.