In Jadavpur, BJP & CPM eye chinks in Trinamool armour
Times of India | 29 May 2024
Kolkata: Jadavpur has a record of unsettling the obvious. It threw a surprise in the heydays of the Left when Mamata Banerjee, then a young Congress candidate, defeated CPM veteran Somnath Chatterjee from Jadavpur Lok Sabha constituency in 1984. She later lost to CPM’s Malini Bhattacharya from the same constituency in 1989.
The Jadavpur assembly segment also shares the same element of unpredictability.Former CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had lost from this constituency in 2011.
People on social media are making conjectures about the outcome of the polls here, at times oblivious to the fact that the LS constituency extends much beyond 8B bus stand.
If the records of parliamentary elections are anything to go by, numbers are heavily poised in favour of Trinamool. It has six MLAs in seven assembly segments under the Lok Sabha constituency except the Bhangar segment where ISF candidate Nawsad Siddique is the MLA.
Like elsewhere in the state, CPM vote share has declined over the years from 44.6% in 2009 to 21.2% in 2019. The BJP, on the other hand, has grown from 2.3% in 2009 to 27.7% in 2019, pushing Left to the third position in the race.
Trinamool has more or less maintained its vote share. Trinamool had a more than 10% gap with the nearest rival, be it CPM or BJP, in the last two Lok Sabha polls.
The CPM in the 2021 assembly polls came second only in Jadavpur and Tollygunj assembly segments, the ISF-CPM jote came first in Bhangar, while the BJP came second in other four assembly segments of Sonarpur Uttar, Sonarpur Dakshin, Baruipur Paschim and Purba.
The CM has this time fielded an actor turned “street fighter” Saayoni Ghosh replacing actor Mimi Chakraborty. CPM relies on young neta Srijan Bhattacharya, who is working overtime to break barriers, and the BJP nominee is the party’s “think tank” Anirban Ganguly.
For Trinamool spokesperson Arup Chakraborty, Ghosh’s win was a foregone conclusion.
BJP’s Anirban Ganguly is making a micro-level campaign to reach out to voters. “I have been receiving overwhelming response in urban and semi-urban areas.”
CPM’s Srijan Bhattacharya is banking on change in people’s psyche in view of rising unemployment, price-rise and corruption.