Jubilee Post News & Views
Jubilee News Desk
With electioneering picking up pace in West Bengal it may be still too early to tell which way the wind will ultimately blow. But for sure this election will have many election pundits going haywire over the calculations as voters might surprise the parties contesting.
West Bengal’s charismatic and combative 66-year-old leader Mamata Banerjee with her pro-people schemes and outreach programmes is trying to return to power for the third consecutive term and the Left-Congress combine trying the spring a surprise with the support of anti-Trinamool and anti-BJP voters. This is the election to watch as BJP is putting up its best to replace Mamata.
Come March 14 and the home Minister Amit Shah will touch West Bengal again for a campaign. On March 14, Shah will hold a roadshow in Kharagpur and will address two rallies in the state a day later. The rallies will be held in Jhargram and in Ranibandh in Bankura district.
West Bengal will see a staggered 8-phase polling, beginning on March 27 when 30 assembly constituencies in 5 western districts will vote. Major parts of Kolkata city will vote in the last two phases on April 26 and 29. Counting will take place on May 2.
BJP has never been in power in the state, but is fancying its chances, to stop TMC from a third-straight term, after a stellar showing in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. West Bengal is poised for a drama-filled Assembly election, of a kind never before witnessed in the state, well that’s what the experts believe.
For the first time after independence, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claims to have a chance of coming to power here. National issues are taking centre stage as much as state and even local issues, and large-scale defection is being used as a political tool. A quadrangular contest, with the main fight being between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP, may re-write the state’s political history.
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It seems a do-or-die struggle for both the Trinamool and the BJP. But the challenge posed by two other political forces contributes an added element of unpredictability—the Left-Congress combine and the newly formed platform including the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and the influential Bengali cleric Abbas Siddiqui’s newly formed party, the Indian Secular Front.
