BEFORE Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first rally in West Bengal after the election calendar was declared, at the historic Brigade Parade Ground, on Saturday BJP threw another gauntlet in the high-voltage battle for the state. He announced that he will deploy Suvendu Adhikari, the Trinamool leader who recently passed to the BJP, from Nandigram against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Mamata had catapulted to power in 2011 with the force of the protest against land acquisition in Nandigram, with her then protégé Adhikari as the face of the turmoil on the ground, making Nandigram the most prestigious race in the elections. to the Assembly as of March 27. he won from the Nandigram seat last time out, while Mamata previously announced that he would compete from here instead of his traditional Bhabanipur seat in Kolkata.
The BJP declared itself a candidate for 56 of the 60 seats that will go to the polls in the first two of the eight phases in West Bengal. The other prominent names to win tickets on Saturday were former Indian cricketer Ashok Dinda and former IPS officer Bharati Ghosh. The BJP has left a seat from the 60s (Baghmundi in the Purulia district) for its ally All Jharkhand Students’ Union.
Shortly after the BJP ticket was issued, Adhikari announced, “I am Bhumi Putra from Nandigram. She (Mamata) is an outsider here. I will defeat her and send her back to Calcutta. “
At Debra in West Midnapore, BJP’s Bharati Ghosh will face another former IPS officer, Humayun Kabir, standing on the Trinamool ticket. While this is Kabir’s debut in the polls, Ghosh, a vice president of the BJP, also opposed the Lok Sabha election. Kabir recently resigned as Chandannagar Police Commissioner, months before his retirement. Ghosh, the former chief of police for the Junglemahal area then dominated by Naxal, was close to Mamata at one point but had a dispute over a CID investigation into extortion charges.
Former pacer Dinda received a ticket from Moyna in East Midnapore, while the BJP sent Tapashi Mondal, a former CPM MLA, from Haldia and former IIM-C professor Ambuj Mohanti from Patashpur in the same district.
The BJP is calling Modi’s Sunday rally the culmination of its Parivartan Yatras across the state, since February. West Bengal BJP President Dilip Ghosh said: “Tomorrow Modiji will address a massive rally in Brigade. Workers from all over the state will come to attend. The Prime Minister will set the tone for the election campaign ”.
Banners, posters and clippings of the prime minister have been placed throughout the city to welcome him, with the party organizing flashmobs for the past few weeks in the run-up to the rally. Several of the BJP’s top leaders are expected to be present at the meeting.
Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar and actor Mithun Chakraborty could also be on the stage. Amid intense speculation about Chakraborty’s joining the BJP, National Secretary General Kailash Vijayvargiya said on Saturday that nothing had been discussed about it.
Once considered close to the CPM, the Trinamool gave Chakraborty a ticket to the Rajya Sabha, although he resigned a couple of years later saying he wanted to leave politics. Chakraborty had recently met with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at his Mumbai home, further fueling speculation about the actor’s foray into politics.
Modi is scheduled to hold more than 20 rallies in the state during the course of the elections, with the last phase on April 29.
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