Amid BJP’s huge surge in North Bengal and in the Jangalmahal region, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has intensified her campaign in these parts of West Bengal to dampen BJP’s strategy to form the next government in the State.
Both North Bengal and the Jangalmahal region consist of 98 Assembly seats out of the total 294 Assembly seats in the State and these regions turned out to be a nightmare for the ruling TMC as they performed miserably in the last Lok Sabha elections. Therefore, to keep her tally up, Mamata is paying more attention in this part of the State.
The other areas, where the TMC supremo is paying more attention is, Malda and Murshidabad, where the party never had a good track record.
But over the last few months, the TMC has aggressively campaigning in the area dominated mostly by refugees and various tribal and Rajbonshi communities. Mamata’s announcement on September 14, 2020 to set up a ‘Tribal Sahitya Academy’ was certainly a well thought move ahead of the Assembly polls this year. Formation of the Academy followed with mass marriages (Gana Vivah), organised by the state government under ‘Rupashree Prakalpa’ scheme, believed to have helped the party to regain its lost ground in some pockets. The mass marriage ceremonies have certainly had its positive impact considering the socio-economic background of the region.
The Rajbonshi community, with more than 30 per cent vote share, is undeniably a deciding factor to turn the tables for any political party in North Bengal. They were the deciding factor during the Left rule till TMC came to power in 2011. Majority of them had favoured the BJP, which led to the devastating results of the TMC in the last Lok Sabha polls.
Mamata knows it very well that any significant division in the Rajbonshi vote share, a deciding factor in nearly 50 out of 54 Assembly segments in North Bengal, could decide the outcome of her mission ‘Ekush’ (2021 Assembly polls).
To keep the momentum high, Mamata once again reached out to the people in North Bengal on February 2. She attended a mass marriage ceremony organised by the state government under the ‘Rupashree Prakalpa’ scheme at Falakata in Alipurduar district.
To strengthen the party’s tribal base in Jangalmahal, Mamata is also chairing a crucial meeting with scheduled cast and scheduled tribe leaders at Geetanjali Stadium in Kolkata on Thursday. There are 44 Assembly seats in Jangalmahal, including 12 seats in Bankura and nine in Purulia, 19 in West Midnapore and four in Jhargram consisting of Gopiballavpur, Jhargram, Binpur and Nayagram.
Jangalmahal has never been a favourable zone for TMC even though they managed to tackle its Maoist problem immediately after coming to power in May 2011.
Both North Bengal and Jangalmahal saw a huge saffron surge in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and to break the BJP’s game plan in this part, Mamata has intensified her campaign in these regions.
There are high chances that the first two phases of the upcoming elections will be held in North Bengal and parts of Jangalmahal and therefore, Mamata has put her campaign focus on this part to gain maximum number of seats.
Out of the eight Lok Sabha seats in North Bengal – Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Raiganj, Balurghat, North Malda and South Malda – Mamata has miserably failed to win a single seat as seven out of the eight went to the BJP, while Malda South was secured by the late Congrees leader Ghani Khan Chowdhury’s brother Abu Hasem Khan Chowdhury (Congress), popularly known as ‘Dalu da’.
In Malda North, BJP’s Khagen Murmu defeated sitting MP Mausam Noor (former Congress MP but fought the last Lok Sabha polls on a TMC ticket), while in Malda South ‘Dalu da’ won the seat by defeating BJP’s Sreerupa Mitra Chaudhury. TMC’s Md Moazzem Hossain stood third.
In the rest of the seats, BJP’s Nisith Pramanik, John Barla, Jayanta Kumar Ray, Raju Singh Bisht, Deboshree Chaudhary, Sukanta Majumdar and Khagen Murmu had sent shock waves in the TMC camp by winning Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Raiganj, Balurghat and North Malda, respectively.
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