Kolkata: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will kickstart his West Bengal election campaign on 7 February with a public rally at Haldia in East Midnapore, a bastion of the ruling Trinamool Congress.
Top BJP leaders told ThePrint that the prime minister will inaugurate road and petroleum projects worth Rs 4,742 crore in Haldia. The industrial town is known for its oil and refinery industry, chemical factories, thermal power plant and a port.
“The PM will inaugurate petroleum projects and other infrastructure projects dedicated to industrial reconstruction. This is one of the many steps that the Modi government will take to generate employment and re-build Bengal’s industry,” BJP general secretary and West Bengal in-charge Kailash Vijayvargiya told ThePrint.
Modi’s choice of location, Haldia, for his first election rally, also indicates that the East Midnapore district will be the epicentre of this year’s assembly polls.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has already announced her decision to contest from Nandigram assembly constituency, which is part of this district. She is most likely to face the BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, a former minister in her cabinet.
The district has seen a transition from being a red fort of the CPI(M) to a green bastion of Mamata Banerjee, after she spearheaded the Nandigram agitation here.
Of the 16 assembly seats in the district, the BJP trailed in 14 segments in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections but the party is hoping that Suvendu Adhikari’s entry will change its fortunes here. Adhikari had been Mamata’s pointsman in the district for over a decade.
For now, however, the Trinamool is ostensibly unperturbed. “East Midnapore is Mamata’s turf. It has been for the past two decades,” veteran Trinamool minister Subrata Mukherjee, who has been given charge of Nandigram, told ThePrint. “The people know of Mamata’s struggle and they will not fall for such communal forces.”
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BJP plans ‘Parivartan Yatra’ across state
Modi’s first mass rally of the election season in the state will be preceded by the ‘Parivartan Yatra’, which the BJP is looking to flag off from five sites in the state.
The yatra will be flagged off by the party’s national president, J.P. Nadda, from Nadia’s Nabadwip on 6 February. It is to continue for a month.
Home Minister Amit Shah is likely to lead the yatra from North Bengal’s Coochbehar district, which has at least 28 to 30 per cent Muslim population.
The BJP had led in seven of nine assembly segments in the district in 2019, while the Trinamool led in two. Three of these seven segments have a Muslim vote-share between 25 and 33 per cent.
The yatra plans, however, have hit a major hurdle. The Mamata Banerjee government, which received a letter from the BJP seeking permission for the yatra on 1 February, has responded saying the party has to apply in the respective districts.
The TMC has accused the BJP of looking to polarise the electorate through the yatra.
“The BJP is day-dreaming. They think that they will win Bengal by such gimmicks. The government will see and take a call on such programmes depending on the communal sensitivity,” TMC general secretary Partha Chatterjee told ThePrint. “Our party leaders at the ground will take out a Shanti Yatra after such programmes.”
The BJP has threatened to move court if permission is denied and remained adamant on holding the programmes as scheduled.
This isn’t, however, the first time that the BJP has run into trouble over its yatra plans. As part of its election campaign in 2019, the party had planned a ‘Ratha Yatra’ across districts in West Bengal but its plans fell flat after the Supreme Court barred it citing possibilities of communal tension.
This time it has decided to call its rally the ‘Parivartan Yatra’.
“There is no Rath Yatra; the media has created this. We will take out a Parivartan Yatra, which will symbolise people’s yearning for change,” state BJP spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya said. “This is a political programme. There has been no communal tension in any of BJP’s programme in the state.”
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