Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari has done what every overworked school principal secretly dreams of: he has converted two Assembly bypolls into a mid-term examination, complete with a pass-fail verdict and an implied attendance register for government benefits.
Speaking on Tuesday as BJP’s Nandigram candidate Hasirani Rath filed her nomination, Adhikari described the October 6 contests in Nandigram and Rejinagar as a “test” for Muslim voters. The question paper, in his telling, is simple. Do they want to “stay” with the government, work “hand-in-hand” with the chief minister, and collect the welfare that follows? Or remain opposed to the BJP and sit outside the classroom?
“I leave it to you whether you want to qualify the test or fail,” he said. Later he sharpened the pencil: Muslims must “prove that they are friends of the BJP.” Friendship, in this curriculum, is measured on one date, in two seats, with counting on October 9.
The political impact arrived faster than the results. Both constituencies have sizeable minority electorates — about 30 per cent in Nandigram, far higher in Rejinagar. By turning that fact into a public examination, Adhikari has done three things at once: polarised a bypoll that was already multi-cornered, given fractured Opposition camps a common talking point, and told every minority voter in Bengal that welfare may now come with a loyalty stamp.
The Opposition marked the paper in red. TMC spokesperson Krishanu Mitra called the remarks “shocking” and “intimidating,” and offered the only civics lesson that still fits a republic: “An election cannot be a test for voters; it is a test for political parties.” AJUP chief Humayun Kabir, whose vacation of Rejinagar created one of the vacancies, accused the government of already squeezing minority access to schemes such as Annapurna and predicted a “befitting reply” on October 6. Other critics said the CM was not seeking votes so much as issuing a threat: cooperate, or watch the tap tighten.
That is the real damage. A four-month-old BJP government that needs to look like an administration has chosen to look like an invigilator. The remark undercuts any serious minority outreach the party claims it wants, because outreach does not usually begin with “prove you are our friend.” In Rejinagar, where Muslim voters can decide the seat, the speech risks consolidating the very bloc Adhikari says he wants to win. In Nandigram, it recasts a local bypoll — already loaded with the memory of his slain aide and his own vacated seat — as a communal referendum.
The bypolls were already a crowded exam hall: two TMC factions, Congress, the Left, AJUP and the BJP. Adhikari has now written “religion” across the top of the question paper. That helps his core Hindu base hear a familiar hymn. It also hands Mamata Banerjee’s camp, the Ritabrata faction and smaller parties a ready charge — that the new government treats citizenship as extra credit and schemes as party property.
Satire writes itself when power starts speaking like an examiner. A voter’s job is not to pass a chief minister’s test. It is to test the government. If October 6 is an examination, the interesting result will not be who “qualifies.” It will be whether Bengal still remembers that the people set the paper — and that no government, however freshly sworn, gets to mark its own homework.