India News | Curtains Drawn on Campaign for Lok Sabha Polls in Bengal
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. A series of high-energy road shows by the Trinamool Congress and the BJP in and around Kolkata marked the end of a whirlwind of a poll campaign for the seventh and final phase of the ongoing parliamentary polls in West Bengal that lasted two and a half months and included all six previous phases in which the state voted.
Kolkata, May 30 (PTI) A series of high-energy road shows by the Trinamool Congress and the BJP in and around Kolkata marked the end of a whirlwind of a poll campaign for the seventh and final phase of the ongoing parliamentary polls in West Bengal that lasted two and a half months and included all six previous phases in which the state voted.
Campaign ended at 6 pm on Thursday for Saturday's polls in nine Lok Sabha constituencies of the state, namely Dum Dum, Barasat, Basirhat, Jaynagar, Mathurapur, Diamond Harbour, Jadavpur, Kolkata Dakshin and Kolkata Uttar.
While the final phase would test the poll fortunes of Trinamool heavyweights like Abhishek Banerjee, Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Saugata Roy in regions considered to be Mamata Banerjee's fortresses, the BJP is putting its money on candidates like Trinamool turncoat Tapas Roy and Sandeshkhali greenhorn Rekha Patra.
The Left-Congress combine, armed with veteran candidates such as Sujan Chakraborty and first-timers like Srijan Bhattacharya, is also looking to dent the TMC-BJP binary vote share and perhaps a little more.
A total of 1.63 crore voters - 83.19 lakh men, 80.20 lakh women and 538 third-gender people - are eligible to exercise their franchise in 17,470 polling stations on June 1.
The intense campaign from all mainstream parties in poll fray -- often bordering on the use of unparliamentary language, verbal duels and cross-trading of charges -- ever since the polls were announced by the ECI in mid-March this year, saw multiple twists and turns in terms of shifts and changes in strategies and issues.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the BJP juggernaut by addressing 19 public meetings in the state and his first-ever roadshow in Kolkata, the Trinamool's counter-offensive was helmed by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who addressed over a staggering 150 rallies and quite a few road shows entailing street walks.
While Modi was backed up by Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP president JP Nadda besides state leaders Suvendu Adhikari and Sukanta Majumdar, Abhishek Banerjee played the perfect second fiddle to the chief minister in crisscrossing the state and reaching out to voters.
Abhishek himself is contesting this phase of the polls from Diamond Harbour and veteran TMC leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay is the party's nominee from the Kolkata Uttar seat.
While in Kolkata Dakshin, TMC fielded veteran candidate Mala Roy against former union minister Debasree Chaudhuri in BJP, the TMC has nominated Sayonee Ghosh in Jadavpur against CPI(M)'s Srijan Bhattacharya and BJP candidate Anirban Ganguly.
A keen contest is expected in the Kolkata Uttar seat between Bandyopadhyay and his former TMC colleague Tapas Roy, who has been nominated by the saffron party.
In Basirhat seat, BJP has played a trump card by nominating Rekha Patra, an alleged victim of atrocities by Trinamool Congress leaders of Sandeshkhali, against TMC veteran and former MP Haji Nurul Islam and CPI(M)'s Nirapada Sardar.
Out of the 124 contestants in the seventh phase of polling, Kolkata Dakshin has the highest number of 17 candidates contesting, followed by Jadavpur (16), and 15 each in Basirhat and Kolkata Uttar parliamentary seats.
From the Dum Dum Lok Sabha seat, 14 candidates are contesting, while there are 12 candidates each in Barasat, Diamond Harbour, and Mathurapur (SC) seats, and in Jaynagar (SC) there are 11 candidates, the poll body elaborated.
On Tuesday, the city witnessed a grand roadshow of the prime minister in north Kolkata in support of BJP candidates Tapas Roy and Silbhadra Dutta.
The TMC supremo responded by holding a counter roadshow on the same route within 24 hours.
On the final day of the campaign on a sultry Thursday afternoon, Mamata Banerjee walked 12 kilometres at a stretch across two constituencies in the southern part of the city - Jadavpur and Kolkata Dakshin - adding the final bit of colour to her three-month-long electioneering.
TMC's Abhishek Banerjee also participated in two rallies on the final day of campaigning from Maheshtala in the western fringes of the city.
BJP's West Bengal president Sukanta Majumdar participated in two rallies in the city while the Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal assembly Suvendhu Adhikary led two roadshows - in Salt Lake and in south Kolkata.
The ECI, for this phase of polling, has decided to deploy 960 companies of central forces to counter any untoward incident during Saturday's polling which is scheduled to start at 7 AM and continue till 6 PM.
During the campaign, the BJP highlighted issues of coal and cattle smuggling, irregularities in recruitment in schools and Sandeshkhali where local TMC leaders were accused of forcible land grabs and sexual atrocities on women.
TMC leaders, on the other hand, claimed that the BJP-led central government did not release funds due to the West Bengal government.
They also alleged that the Modi government was misusing central probe agencies like the CBI, and Enforcement Directorate (ED) as a political tool to torment leaders of opposition parties.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)