Hooghly is both a river, and a fluid constituency in south Bengal, that’s changed its colours, from red (CPM), white, blue (TMC), to saffron (BJP)—all within a decade and a half. Until which time, Hooghly, like much of West Bengal was, more or less, the land of the Left. Mamata Banerjee’s TMC—besides having supporters inherited from the Congress, that Mamata broke away from, in 1998—it is widely believed, also poached cadre from the CPI (M).

Especially once the Left Front government fell in 2011, after 34 years of the longest rule of any elected communist government in the world. There are zero MLAs from both the Left and the Congress in the current Bengal Assembly. What about the BJP? They went from two to 18 seats, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, in Bengal. And from three to 77 in the 2021 Assembly elections. The latter was seen as drubbing, only by those who can’t read numbers, or the writing on the wall.