E-Paper
For BJP, final phase of Bengal Lok Sabha polls is an acid test
The most high-profile of the nine in the final phase is Diamond Harbour that has twice elected Abhishek Banerjee since 2014
KOLKATA: For the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has targeted 30 of West Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats, the seventh and last phase of polling at nine seats in Kolkata and two adjacent districts of South and North 24 Parganas is expected to be crucial because it trailed the ruling Trinamool Congress on all nine constituencies in 2019.
The Dum Dum, Barasat and Basirhat seats are in the North 24 Parganas while Jaynagar, Mathurapur, Diamond Harbour and Jadavpur are in the South 24 Parganas. The Kolkata North and Kolkata South seats cover the state capital.
Characterised by a mix of rural and cosmopolitan voters who speak various languages, including Hindi, some of these nine seats are likely to witness a different voting pattern because the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), fielded some prominent faces to emerge as a third force in the last leg of the elections. The Congress is also in race as the Left’s electoral ally.
In the six phases covering 33 seats, the contests were primarily bipolar in most seats; the BJP won 18 of these 33 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The most high-profile of the nine in the final phase is Diamond Harbour that has twice voted chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee since 2014.
“All I ask you is to increase the margin of victory to 4,00,000,” Banerjee, who won by 71,000 votes in 2018 and a whopping 3,20,000 in 2019, told voters at his last rally on Thursday.
Abhijit Das, a local activist who secured 2,00,858 votes for BJP at Diamond Harbour in 2014, has been fielded again this year. The CPI(M) has fielded Pratikur Rahaman, one of its state committee members and national vice-president of Students’ Federation of India (SFI). Having snapped electoral ties with the CPI(M), the three-year-old Indian Secular Front (ISF) is also in the fray.
“Muslims comprise around 40% of the constituency’s population and are seen as the TMC’s vote bank. The Muslim candidates of the CPI(M) and ISF may get a fraction of these votes and thus indirectly help BJP,” said Sajal Das, a school teacher from the Budge Budge assembly segment. TMC won all seven assembly segments in Diamond Harbour in the 2021 Bengal assembly elections.
Seen as a high-profile seat since the Left Front era, Jadavpur was represented by CPI(M) stalwart Somnath Chatterjee from 1977 to 1984 before he was defeated by Mamata Banerjee, then a youth Congress leader. Banerjee’s 1984 victory marked her debut in electoral politics.
The CPI(M), which won Jadavpur thrice between 1989 and 2004, has fielded its state committee member and former SFI state secretary Srijan Bhattacharya against actor and TMC’s youth wing president Saayoni Ghosh. The BJP, on the other hand, has nominated national executive member Anirban Ganguly who unsuccessfully contested the Bolpur seat in Bibhum district in 2019.
ISF founder Nawsad Siddique wrested the Bhangar assembly seat- one of the seven assembly segments in the Jadavpur Lok Sabha constituency - from the TMC in 2021. The ISF has entered the Lok Sabha race as well.
“Srijan Bhattacharya is popular as a youth leader. Although former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was defeated from his Jadavpur assembly seat in 2021, CPI(M)’s Sujan Chakraborty managed to wrest it in 2016. The Marxists still have a presence in the Jadavpur Lok Sabha segment,” said Amitabha Bhattacharya, an engineer and a resident.
The Kolkata South seat was won by Mamata Banerjee six times between 1991 and 2011. Although considered a safe seat for the ruling party, the BJP increased its vote share in the Bhawanipore assembly segment in some of the civic body and assembly polls over the years due to its popularity among Hindi and Gujarati-speaking voters from this area.
The TMC has fielded Mala Roy who won the seat in 2019 while the BJP, in a surprise move, fielded Debashri Chaudhary who won north Bengal’s Raiganj Lok Sabha seat, her home ground, in 2019.
“Kolkata South is Mamata Banerjee’s home. The voters have always firmly stood by our party,” Roy said.
Unlike Kolkata South, the Kolkata North seat is likely to witness a close contest because senior TMC leader and former minister Tapas Roy, who resigned from the West Bengal assembly in March and joined the BJP, has been fielded against incumbent Sudip Bandopadhyay, his arch-rival.
Amid reports that some of Roy’s supporters from his TMC days are backing him against the party’s official candidate, the BJP has also focused on this seat and ensured that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first-ever roadshow in Bengal on Tuesday passed through the heart of the Kolkata North seat.
In North 24 Parganas district bordering Bangladesh, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed in March is a raging issue because of the presence of Namasudra and Dalit Matua community voters many of whom came from Bangladesh as refugees. In 2019, a large section of this population helped the BJP win the Bongaon and Barrackpore seats where polls were held in the fifth phase.
Having won from Dum Dum thrice since 2009, 76-year-old Saugata Roy is TMC’s eldest candidate in the ongoing polls. The CPI(M) has fielded its central committee member Sujan Chakraborty against Roy while former TMC legislator Shilbhadra Dutta, who joined BJP in 2020, is contesting for the saffron camp.
“I can only see a smooth victory. The so-called opponents are nowhere in the race,” Roy said on Thursday evening as campaigning ended.
Since February, BJP leaders including PM Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah, have focused on allegations of rape and molestation by some Dalit and tribal women against local TMC leaders headed by Shahjahan Sheikh at Sandeshkhali in North 24 Parganas district. Sheikh and his followers were subsequently arrested.
Sandeshkhali is one of the seven TMC-controlled assembly segments in the Basirhat Lok Sabha seat that the ruling party has won continuously since 2009.
TMC’s Haji Nurul Islam, who snatched the Basirhat seatfrom CPI(M) in 2009, has been fielded again to counter BJP’s Rekha Patra, one of the women who led the Sandeshkhali agitation. The CPI(M) has fielded Nirapada Sardar who was the Sandeshkhali legislator till 2018.
“People have realised that trumped up allegations were levelled. They will deliver justice by casting their votes for TMC,” Haji Nurul Islam said.
Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya said the people have already decided. “People of Bengal have taken their decision. BJP have their mandate. No constituency is safe for TMC anymore”.
