Within two days of taking over as the commissioner of the State Election Commission, the former chief secretary of state Rajiva Sinha announced that panchayat polls would be held on July 8. The news will be welcomed by Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee, who has been eager to consolidate her position in rural Bengal well before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.While the BJP was able to sweep the 2019 Lok Sabha election, next year’s general election is going to be of an entirely different nature. In 2024, the manoeuvrability of the political parties and the electoral skill of their leaders will be put to the test. Those parties or leaders with the ability to reach the people at the grassroots could prove to be decisive in shaping the election.Conscious of this reality, Banerjee is not willing to allow any space for the BJP to turn the situation in its favour. It is certainly manifest in Sinha’s directive to start the electoral process on June 9, the day the panchayat elections were announced.The BJP will be encouraged by its performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls (when it won 18 of the 42 seats in the state) and winning 73 seats in the 2021 assembly election – even if that did not prevent the TMC’s massive victory. Amit Shah is apparently confident of sweeping the panchayat elections. For the BJP, this election may prove to be a litmus test to see if it can consolidate its position in eastern and northeastern India.Amit Shah at the Imphal press conference today. Photo: Twitter/@AmitShahFor Banerjee, her prestige is at stake. If the TMC performs poorly in the panchayat elections, the BJP will sense an opportunity to eclipse Banerjee and will launch an all-out war against her. Therefore, Banerjee will want a dominant victory in the panchayat elections – not only to assert her position as the sole political face of Bengal, but also to shred the BJP before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.In 2019, the BJP won 18 seats and TMC 22, and the Congress bagged the last two seats. In 2014, the TMC won 34 seats. In next year’s general election, Banerjee would certainly like to see her party’s tally increase to 34 again. That prospect depends on the TMC’s performance in the panchayat elections.TMC had won 16,814 of the 48,650 seats it contested in the 2018 panchayat elections and secured another 3,059 of the 9,217 uncontested ones. The party also won 203 of the 825 zilla parishad seats. The three-tier Panchayati Raj system consists of Gram Panchayat, Panchayat Samiti and Zila Parishad.Banerjee began preparations for the panchayat election at least two years ago. She restructured the party apparatus at the village and panchayat level, inducted new blood and entrusted her nephew Abhishek Banerjee with the task of selecting probable candidates and designing the strategy to contest the elections. Any party having a deep anchor in rural Bengal will be in an enviable situation during the 2024 general election.Usually, the top leaders of the party decide the candidates for the district council or village panchayat elections. Even the communists do not follow the principle of complete decentralisation. But Mamata has made a complete departure from the general practice. Days after losing its national party status, Banerjee announced that the TMC would hold a secret ballot to select candidates for the panchayat polls. The exercise will be supervised by Abhishek, Mamata’s nephew and the party’s national general secretary.Senior TMC leaders claim that Abhishek’s regular summons by central agencies like the ED and CBI are part of the BJP’s tactics to deny him time to devote to the task of screening and selecting the TMC candidates for panchayat polls. Undertaken under the TMC’s ‘Gram Banglar Motamot’ (opinion of rural Bengal), the exercise has thrown up a new brand of young leaders who are politically and ideologically committed to fighting the BJP and its rightist politics.Political analysts nevertheless see this move as part of Mamata Banerjee’s attempt to regain lost ground before the 2024 general elections, and more importantly, to project Abhishek as the party’s second-in-command and her heir apparent. Ironically, while Banerjee is striving to project Abhishek as a crusader against corruption, the ED and CBI are questioning him for involvement in alleged scams. Undeterred by the machinations of the ED and CBI, Abhishek has managed to tighten his grip over the party’s grassroots and the process of ticket distribution.TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee. Photo: PTIOpponents in a quandaryWhile Banerjee is steadily going ahead with her plans, the TMC’s two principal challengers are in a quandary. If the national leadership of the BJP is desperately trying to put the state unit in order, the CPI(M) and Congress are in a state of utter confusion.The state BJP is vertically split between long-time BJP leaders and workers and turncoats who have recently defected from other parties. The original leaders are not at all willing to give much space to the turncoats. They burse the view that they are more interested in settling their differences with Banerjee than strengthening and broad-basing the party. Even the RSS is against the turncoats led by Suvendu Adhikari being given more space.The feud between the two factions of the BJP’s state unit has turned out to be a real headache for the national leaders. The leadership nurses the lingering fear that the turncoats – who have a sizeable number of former CPI(M) cadres – may switch their loyalty to their parent organisation.The condition of the Congress is most deplorable. It had entered into a coalition with the CPI(M) and the Indian Secular Front to contest the assembly election. In the panchayat election too, the state Congress leadership is in favour of continuing with this mechanism. But the ground-level workers are opposed to this proposal, made by Congress state president Adhir Ranjan Choudhary. The Congress workers have fundamental differences with the Marxists. A couple of months ago, a major chunk of TMC leaders, who are primarily from the traditional Congress background, the Bhadralok Bangali, wanted to “revive the dying Congress”, according to sources. But the state Congress’s insistence on continuing to have relations with the CPI(M) made them retreat.The Congress’s main problem has been the dearth of able leaders. There are only a couple of old guards like Pradip Bhattacharya. But they are unable to lead the party in a state which witnesses competitive politics. Ironically, Adhir Choudhary is not acceptable to the traditional Congressmen. He even does not enjoy popular support in his home district. The Muslim community wants to rally behind Rahul Gandhi but the absence of a competent and strong leadership in the state will mean that they might bet on the TMC instead. It was the absence of a motivating leadership that forced the lone Congress MLA, Byron Biswas to switch to the TMC.Choudhary is supposed to be the Congress’s stalwart but unfortunately, he has not succeeded in building second-rung leadership. While he has been the harshest critic of Mamata Banerjee, Congress workers say he is too soft towards the BJP, the Congress’s principal opponent at the national level.