While West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress is buoyed by its stellar electoral performance after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is hot on its heels and has demanded that all pending civic polls in the state should be held simultaneously and not Together. Selected as per convenience of TMC.
The opposition party’s statement came after the Trinamool had written to the State Election Commission requesting it to hold municipal elections in Kolkata, Howrah and Bidhannagar on December 19.
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State BJP leaders see a ploy in this and claim that the TMC’s move has been motivated by the failure of the opposition party to get even a single MLA seat in these three constituencies and the Trinamool wants to take advantage of the favorable political situation. .
Speaking to News18.com, former state BJP president Dilip Ghosh said, “We have no problem with this. But if they are really strong enough in Bengal, then let them fight together in all the pending civic polls. Our performance in the recent elections in the state was not so good as people were threatened and terrorized for supporting the BJP in Bengal. The margin of victory clearly shows how TMC secures voters by terrorizing people. We have been demanding municipal elections for a long time, but TMC was scared of BJP’s rapid growth in Bengal. We are ready to face them even when the situation is tough and I am sure that if elections are held simultaneously in around 120 municipal bodies we will manage to win a large number of wards. Our election committee members will soon discuss the matter and it will be taken before the Election Commission.
The TMC, led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, is at electoral height this year after a decisive victory over the BJP in the April-May assembly elections, followed by massive victories in the bypolls held in late September and October.
“Preliminary talks on urban elections have started and more details will be provided in the coming days,” said senior Trinamool leader and municipal affairs minister Chandrima Bhattacharya.
BJP spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya, however, accused the TMC of political violence. “BJP is the largest party in the world and some adverse election results due to TMC’s terror politics are not going to stop us from achieving our goals in Bengal. Yes, we are ready to face them in civic polls, but the condition is that they face us in all 120 municipal bodies simultaneously and not in a phased manner. This is their strategy to secure the children through their goons and we will not agree on that.”
Suggesting that the state government was deliberately delaying the election process, the state BJP wrote a letter to the state election commission ahead of the recently held assembly elections, reminding the Supreme Court last year to seek immediate intervention in the matter. Of. Opinion on how soon the pending elections can be held.
The Calcutta High Court had also earlier said that elections should be held at the earliest.
In 2015, the TMC won 114 out of a total of 144 wards under the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). Left parties got 15, BJP got 7 and Congress got 5. Voting was also held in 91 municipalities of the state and Trinamool got 71 seats.
In the last five years, the BJP has made inroads in Bengal and the party led by the then state unit chief Dilip Ghosh not only managed to grab 18 Lok Sabha seats from the ruling TMC in 2019 (from just two seats in 2014). , it also performed well in around 51 out of 144 wards of Kolkata Municipal Corporation.
During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had taken a lead in around 26 wards of North and South Kolkata. It is worth noting that this also includes ward number 82 of Chetla which belongs to Mayor Firhad Hakim.
In January 2011, Hakim won the by-election from Chetla by securing around 76.82 per cent votes. In 2010, he had won from this ward by about 72 per cent votes. His victory was huge against BJP’s Jiban Sen, who could manage only 11.95 per cent of the votes.
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But in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Firhad’s party ally Mala Roy, the candidate from Kolkata South, managed to lead from Chetla constituency by only around 1,000 votes.
The most special was Mamta Banerjee’s own ward no. 73 Where, as per the voting pattern during the general election, the BJP was leading by around 490 votes.
Similar trends were also observed in wards 58, 85 and 93. Ward number 58 comes under senior mayor-in-council member Swapan Samaddar, ward numbers 85 and 93 are under Debashish Kumar and Ratan Dey. All three failed to gain the lead.
At least three TMC borough presidents- Sandeep Bakshi, Ratan Malakar and Sushant Ghosh are also trailing in their respective wards.
Senior Trinamool leader and party MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay was also behind in eight of the 11 wards of Jorasanko in Kolkata North Lok Sabha constituency during the 2019 parliamentary elections. In Jadavpur, the ruling TMC is trailing in four wards.
However, Bengal politics has seen a major change in the last two years, especially as Mamata Banerjee has returned to power with a massive mandate and analysts say it will now be interesting to see if the BJP manages to achieve it. No. On ‘Didi Lehar’ in Bengal.
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