PM Modi’s Bengal tour: Three visits in six days with eye on general elections
Telegraph | 24 February 2024
Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to carpet-bomb Bengal in early March with three visits in six days, looking to kick-start his party’s general-election campaign in a state it covets.
Modi was already scheduled to address a rally in Barasat on March 6; he will now address two others, in Arambagh on March 1 and in Krishnanagar on March 2. The BJP fancies its chances in all three Lok Sabha seats this time.
At the Barasat rally, Modi is expected to speak to some of the Sandeshkhali women who have complained of sexual assault by Trinamul strongman Sheikh Shahjahan’s henchmen.
“The Prime Minister usually starts his campaign after the announcement of elections. Although
he is coming to Bengal just before the Lok
Sabha polls are announced, he is expected to start the campaign for us here,” BJP Midnapore MP Dilip Ghosh
said.
Modi’s
March 1-2 trip will precede a March 3-5 visit to Bengal by the full bench of the Election Commission of India. The commission had initially announced a
March 4-6 tour but a revised schedule was released on Friday, apparently to
avoid a clash with Modi’s March 6 rally.
A
political scientist who has been studying Bengal said Modi’s proposed visits
reflected a carefully worked out strategy.
“On
March 1 and 2, he is going to constituencies with women MPs — Aparupa Poddar
(Trinamul) in Arambagh and (the recently
disqualified) Mahua Moitra in Krishnanagar. It’s obvious that the BJP is prioritising propaganda to woo
women voters,” he said.
He
added that Moitra, who has been a thorn in the BJP’s
side, represented a constituency where the saffron
party has had a fairly long presence, and that Poddar’s meagre victory margin
of 1,142 votes in 2019 made Arambagh a prime target for the BJP.
“More
important, there is supposed to be a ‘women’s conference’ at Barasat where Modi
is likely to interact with some of the Sandeshkhali
victims. That is likely to be turned into a
spectacle by the saffron
ecosystem, especially with International Women’s Day (March 8) round the corner. It will need to be countered
directly by Mamata Banerjee herself,” he said.
Asked
about Modi’s proposed interactions with Sandeshkhali women in Barasat, Bengal
finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharya said Trinamul need not comment on the matter but expressed suspicion that
people from “elsewhere” might be brought to the event.
“We
don’t know, we have to find out who he is bringing — whether they are from
Sandeshkhali at all or from elsewhere,” she said.
“Anybody
can come and meet the Prime
Minister. It’s up to the women.
He ought to introspect whether he should look at this (Sandeshkhali) as the Prime Minister of India or as the foremost leader of the BJP.”
BJP
leaders say the party aims to
escalate Sandeshkhali to the level
of Singur and Nandigram, which had helped bring about a change of guard in
Bengal. The party hopes the issue will resonate with women
voters, who have supported Mamata overwhelmingly in recent elections. “Mamata
Banerjee is
the chief minister, but more
important, she is a woman. I cannot imagine how a woman chief minister can be
so insensitive towards the problems
of women,” state BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar said.