'Bengal Revolted, Day Of Liberation': BJP Leader Swapan Dasgupta To NDTV

Journalist-turned-politician Swapan Dasgupta construed the BJP's triumph in West Bengal as a referendum against the sense of decline and hopelessness. The politician, who won the Rashbehari seat on the BJP's ticket, said the counting day was a "great day of liberation".

"West Bengal became one of the Bimaru states. You know, that's a tragedy, but West Bengal was in danger of becoming the largest supplier of migrant labour. West Bengal, or particularly Calcutta, became a fantastic place to get out of. And I think that was something which finally people woke up to, the sense of decline, that there is a sense of hopelessness, and they wanted to get back and acquire, reacquire the relevance. The Trinamool Congress thought this was an election about SIR. They thought this was an election to say, you eat meat, you don't eat meat, you eat jhalmuri, you dress in sarees, you don't dress in sarees...I think Bengal just rose in revolt against that...I see this as a great day of liberation," he told NDTV in an interview.

He said the people rejected a "certain type of politics", taking a dig at the Trinamool Congress.

"I don't want to exaggerate the importance of this, but really I think people are fed up with the particular type of politics which they have seen in Bengal and I think they really wanted a change and they wanted a new beginning, a beginning in which some of the old assumptions of West Bengal could be questioned and the meaning of the politics of West Bengal could be redefined. So, I think we were the beneficiaries of those," he added.

He said the BJP's ideologue, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, started his politics from Rashbehari.

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"What was significant about this constituency, Rashbehari, which I now have the privilege of representing, is that it used to be the place of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee's politics, and it's the first time since the 1950s that it's elected a saffron representative," he added.

The BJP had been struggling to get a foothold in West Bengal, which was dominated first by the Left and, since 2011, the Trinamool Congress. However, after an intense struggle with the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress, which didn't give in easily and tried to stop the BJP in its tracks, the party is headed toward a landslide victory.

The BJP has either won or is leading in 206 seats, reducing the Trinamool to 81 seats and ensuring that Mamata Banerjee doesn't get her fourth straight term as the chief minister of Bengal.