When TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee ran into BJP’s Matua face

Thakur was accommodated as Cabinet minister when Prime Minister Narendra Modi carried out his mid-term ministry expansion in July 2021, which was essentially an exercise to balance various caste interests ahead of crucial Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh elections coming in 2022. The Matua Mahasangha is a lower-caste Hindu religious sect that originated in Bangladesh but has been based at Thakurnagar in North 24 Parganas since Partition.

Originally seen as a TMC vote base, the Matuas, belonging to the Scheduled Caste Namasudra community and numbering around 3 crore, have been successfully wooed by the BJP since it started making serious moves in West Bengal. Though not citizens, the fact that they can vote has made them valuable for parties. The BJP’s promise of citizenship to them under the CAA – which is now delayed – tilted the scales for the party within the community.

Shantanu Thakur himself switched political loyalties, with his father Manjul Krishna Thakur having been a minister in the TMC government. It was with the intention of wooing the Matuas that TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee had reached out to Manjul Thakur, giving him first a ticket and then the ministry.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Manjul’s elder brother Kapil Krishna Thakur was nominated as a TMC candidate from the Bangaon Lok Sabha seat, and won by a huge margin.

However, after the sudden death of Kapil Krishna in October 2014, a family feud resulted between his wife Mamata Bala Thakur and his brother. Manjul wanted his youngest son Subrata to get the TMC ticket for the by-election from the Bongaon seat, but the TMC picked Mamata Bala.

Manjul quit as minister to join the BJP, and the latter gave Subrata a ticket from Bongaon in the bypoll in February 2015. However, Mamata Bala won the election, with Subrata coming third.

Manjul returned to the TMC a few months later, but was never reinducted into Mamata Banerjee’s Cabinet. In addition, the charge of party affairs in the area was handed over to Mamata Bala, the newly elected TMC MLA.

In the 2016 Assembly polls, Manjul was denied a ticket by the TMC, at a time when he also appeared to be losing out in internal politics over the control of Thakurbari. That’s when Manjul’s eldest son Shantanu stepped into the ring. In February 2019, he helped organise Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Thakurnagar. Ahead of the rally, Modi met Matua community matriarch Binapani Devi and took her blessings.

In March 2019, when Binapani Devi passed away, the family feud again spilled out in the open, over control of the Matua Mahasangha. This resulted in the creation of two Matua factions – one pro-TMC, led by Mamata Bala, and the other led by Shantanu, who had by then started hobnobbing with the BJP.

The Matua Mahasangha, at this time, ruled that only a “true descendant” of Binapani Devi would head the body. This helped elevate Devi’s grandson Shantanu to the post of Sabhapati, replacing Mamata Bala, who was neither related to Devi by blood, nor had an heir to contest the post on her behalf.

The BJP immediately fielded Shantanu from the Bangaon Lok Sabha seat in 2019 against his aunt Mamata Bala. Shantanu won, and also took control of the Matua Mahasangha.

The Matuas are believed to have voted en masse for the BJP in that election, with the party winning a record 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

In the middle of the 2021 West Bengal Assembly polls, Shantanu was part of Modi’s team during his visit to Bangladesh, which included a trip to Orakandi, where the founder of the Matua sect, social reformer Harichand Thakur, was born.

However, in the 2021 polls, the BJP lost several Matua-dominated Assembly seats in North 24 Parganas and Nadia districts to the TMC, which swept the polls.

Evidently, to get back the support of the entire community, the Modi government inducted Shantanu in the Union Cabinet in July 2021, making him the Minister of State for Ports, Shipping and Waterways.