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Violent clashes, bitter verbal war as BJP aims to breach TMC stronghold
Temples wear fresh coats of paint. Saffron flags seen at Hindu shrines outnumber those displaying the BJP’s lotus symbol.
Barely 45 km from Kolkata, Hanuman Bag can be passed off as a neighbourhood in some town in the Hindi heartland.
Temples wear fresh coats of paint. Saffron flags seen at Hindu shrines outnumber those displaying the BJP’s lotus symbol. And, PM Narendra Modi can be seen smiling from posters hung in every nook of this area in the Barrackpore Lok Sabha seat.
The high-profile seat in the North 24 Parganas district, where former railways minister and sitting parliamentarian Dinesh Trivedi is contesting against the BJP Arjun Singh, saw violence erupt shortly after polling opened on Monday.
Singh, who crossed over to the saffron party in March after he was denied a ticket by the Trinamool leadership, suffered minor injuries on his face after being attacked allegedly by Trinamool supporters, but Trivedi asked how anyone could attack a “strongman”. Television visuals showed Singh being chased by groups of men, and an FIR was filed against him for a “scuffle with the cops”, said the additional director general of law and order, SN Gupta.
Singh is seen as a bahubali (strongman) by Hindi-speaking voters and migrant laborers from Bihar whose forefathers settled down in the industrial belts that dot the assembly segments of Bijpur, Naihati, Bhatpara, Jagaddal, Noapara, and Barrackpore.
Though many units have shut down, these areas still have small and medium industries, jute mills and factories of the Ordnance Factory Board. Only Amdanga, the seventh assembly segment, is mostly rural.
“It is a fact that many Trinamool workers who became inactive in the last five years because of infighting are back on the streets,” Dilip Shaw, resident of Kankinara and migrant from Bihar, said.
