Phase 1 of the assembly elections in Bengal had generated one big headline — a whopping 92 per cent turnout. What followed was a scramble in both BJP and Trinamool Congress camps to put an advantageous spin on it. The wait now is to see if a follow-up act will be needed.
South Bengal is a bastion of the Trinamool Congress — an area where its welfare schemes have left a distinct mark and the party is ebullient in its certainty of scooping up most of the seats. Of the 142 seats going to polls in this phase, the Trinamool won 123 seats, the BJP 18 and the Left 1 in the 2021 assembly polls.
The BJP, which has its task cut out to breach the Trinamool ramparts, has put its faith in figures, sources said. The party has come up with a foolproof plan to focus on seats where it earlier led. This, it hopes, will fill the gap between its Phase 1 score and the majority mark of 148 in the 294-seat assembly.
The BJP strategy has combined hard politics focusing on jobs, infiltration, corruption and women’s security with jibes about potholes of Kolkata and a promise of development — a blend as spicy as the jhalmuri Prime Minister Narendra Modi had sampled on his campaign trail.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had responded with the outsider tag, the state’s cultural history, SIR and “sobji bajar” – the customary veggie shopping a bhadralok begins his day with.
The voter list deletions, though, are expected to affect the results, especially in seats where the margin of victory is low. The deletions in some areas are more than the victory margin of the Trinamool Congress.
The biggest battle is in Kolkata’s Bhabanipur, where the BJP’s Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari has challenged the Chief Minister. The prestige fight has had all riveted, given the outcome of their last contest in Nandigram.
Banerjee has alleged that 51,000 voters were deleted from the south Kolkata constituency during the Special Intensive Revision of voter lists by the Election Commission. In 2021, she won the seat with a margin of 58,000 votes.
The other key players in this phase include Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim, state minister Shashi Panja, Aroop Biswas, Bratya Basu, Sujit Basu and Chandrima Bhattacharya. The BJP, which has gone for local faces this time to counter the outsider tag, has fielded Swapan Dasgupta, actor Rupa Ganguli and from Panihati, the mother of the RG Kar rape-murder victim.
The counting of votes for Bengal, as well as the other states and the Union Territory of Puducherry that went to polls this time, will be held on May 4.