Mamata Banerjee’s plan for a plural Bhabanipur: Door-to-door visits, separate meetings
Telegraph | 7 April 2026
Visiting each home at least thrice, separate meetings with the communities and large rallies closer to the day of polling — that is the Trinamool Congress campaign plan for Bhabanipur in a nutshell.
Party insiders said the objective was to make the campaign intimate and reaffirm the party’s base among several communities in Bhabanipur.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to file her nomination as a Trinamool candidate from Bhabanipur on Wednesday. Party sources said its leaders and workers have been asked to gather at Hazra from 10am that day. Mamata is likely to file her nomination around noon.
Union home minister Amit Shah accompanied BJP candidate Suvendu Adhikari while he filed his nomination from Bhabanipur last week.
Over the past two weeks, Trinamool’s campaign in Bhabanipur has focused on door-to-door visits.
Apart from meeting party workers and councillors of her constituency at Ahindra Mancha in Chetla on March 22, Mamata has not held any rallies or meetings in Bhabanipur yet.
“We have planned a rally from Hazra to Gopalnagar on Wednesday, when Mamata Banerjee will file her nomination papers. If the police stop us before that, we will stop, but thousands of people will be there cheering for her,” a party leader told Metro.
Mamata is expected to leave her home a little before noon on Wednesday. The Bhabanipur candidates have to file their nominations with the returning officer at the Survey Building in Alipore.
A local councillor who has been part of the Bhabanipur campaign said: “We are trying to visit every home three times. It can be different teams calling them on. We are also trying to organise meetings with residents of housing complexes where many are coming to meet us,” said the councillor.
Separate meetings with influential community members are being conducted simultaneously.
Often called a mini-India, Bhabanipur has a large number of Gujaratis, Marwaris, Sikhs, Biharis and Bengalis living together for decades.
The Bhabanipur Assembly constituency includes seven wards of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation — 63, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77 and 82. Its boundary stretches from Bhabanipur-Chakraberia in the east to Alipore-Ekbalpore-Kidderpore in the west, Chetla in the south, and Maidan in the north.
On Thursday, Calcutta’s mayor Firhad Hakim, Ward 74 councillor Debalina Biswas and other Trinamool leaders met members of the Marwari community at Alipore’s Agri Horticultural Society.
“We reached the Horticultural Society at 6.30am. A large number of people go to the park for a morning walk, many of them community elders who have a lot of respect and influence among the community members,” said a party leader.
“There were some top industrialists in the gathering. We told the community members that they may have voted for the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections, but Mamata Banerjee is one of their own; they should vote for her in the Assembly elections. It seemed they were happy with her, but some of them flagged the absence of more industries in the state,” a party leader said.
A meeting with the members of the Gujarati community at Swaminarayan Mandir on Chakraberia Road North is on the cards. “The date is being worked out,” said a party leader.
Party sources said the chief minister will herself hit the streets in Bhabanipur at a later stage of the campaigning. She is now campaigning in the districts.
On Monday, she addressed public meetings in East Bardhaman’s Purbasthali and in Nadia’s Bethuadahari and Santipur.