Elections concern the lower house Indian Parliament, Lok Sabha, which has 543 seats. The party or coalition of parties that gets the majority of votes will nominate a candidate for prime minister and form the government.

The main opponents of the BJP are Indian National Congressor more simply called “Congress”, which is the only other party present on the national political scene, which it has dominated since independenceIndia until the 1990s. However, the Congress lost the last two national elections by a wide margin.

To contest the 2024 elections, the Congress has formed alliances with a large number of regional parties, such as the All India Trinamool Congress, TMC, which governs the state of West Bengal.

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Muslim voices matter

Hindu-Muslim relations undoubtedly played a role in this election. In the Calcutta region there is a small amount of resistance to the BJP, especially from minority groups.

In this state, they represent about 30% of the electorate, so their influence amounts to about 16 seats out of the 42 seats allocated in the election. West Bengal in the Lok Sabha, National Assembly, making it the electoral bloc all parties aspire to.

And not all Muslims like this party Narendra Modi which they thought was too extremist. Experts say anti-Muslim sentiment has increased under the leadership of Modi and the BJP, which has pursued a Hindu nationalist agenda since coming to power in 2014.

The Muslim vote is still divided between the TMC, Congress and the Communist Party of India. In most cases, several secular parties field strong candidates in constituencies with large Muslim populations, trying to win votes in their favor.

Because Muslims prefer to vote for secular parties rather than the BJP. This ultimately leads to a split in the Muslim vote, resulting in the defeat of Muslim or secular candidates in many cases.

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Vote in West Bengal

In the case of West Bengal, Muslims will likely still vote for the TMC, the majority ruling this western Indian state according to analysts, because people are sure of one thing here: if the BJP takes power in their state, Muslims will be more choose TMC. persecuted as happened in other states of India.

The 2021 parliamentary elections were marked by an almost complete concentration of Muslim votes in favor of the TMC, which was seen as a useful yet desperate vote by Muslims that would enable them to prevent the BJP from taking over the state government.

But to achieve the same result, the imams will definitely appeal to members of the Muslim community in the state's 40,000 mosques to ensure that there will be no scattered minority voices, to avoid what happened in 2019 in other regions where minority groups reside . significant and which led to the success of the BJP.

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