Suvendu Adhikari’s ‘strongman’ standing is extremely questionable; Mamata unlikely to face stiff problem in Nandigram – Politics News , ResideNews360

In West Bengal, it’s starting to get to a bare-knuckles electoral contest in a couple of months. The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) has an enormous edge, however the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is pushing. More shortly on what is anticipated when push involves shove.

On Monday, TMC boss and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was in Nandigram for a rally attended by over 200,000 folks in line with media estimates. From the dais, Mamata made an announcement that shook Bengal. ‘What if I contest from Nandigram?’ she requested, to one thing approaching delirium.

Let’s step again to 2007. That yr, the Left Front authorities headed by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya determined to accumulate land for a particular financial zone (SEZ) for a chemicals-based mission. Widespread violence broke out in its aftermath, with police forces and CPM occasion cadre launching an assault towards peasants not prepared to surrender their land.

This adopted the acquisition of land in Singur, in Hooghly district throughout the river from Kolkata, in 2006. This mission was met by a large agitation as properly. Ultimately, each tasks needed to be shelved. Singur and Nandigram launched Mamata and the TMC into the massive league. Let’s be clear. Mamata has a busload of political weaknesses, together with a streak of paranoid authoritarianism, not in contrast to her chief antagonist.

But allow us to be clear once more. Mamata’s political instincts are terribly sharp and, much more necessary, she has the braveness of a streetfighter who took on the then-powerful Left Front, when everybody else (with the doable exception of Congress chief within the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Choudhury) was operating for canopy.

Mamata’s 26-day starvation strike in December 2006 towards the Tatas’ Nano mission in Singur was a defining second in Bengal politics. The Tatas withdrew and relocated to Gujarat. In the 2006 Bengal Assembly elections, the CPM-led Left Front had acquired 230 seats out of 294 and the TMC acquired 35. The then chief minister Buddhabeb Bhattacharya reminded the press of this truth in a message outdoors Writers’ Buildings. Translated into English, he mentioned, ‘We are 235, they are 30.’

Five years later, a TMC-Congress alliance acquired 228 seats; the Left 62. In 2016, the TMC acquired 211 seats, contesting solo. Since then, it has received by-elections in Kharagpur (vacated by BJP state president Dilip Ghosh after profitable the Midnapur Lok Sabha seat) and Kaliaganj (the place the sitting Congress MLA Pramathanath Roy died.) Kaliaganj is a part of the Raiganj constituency (Uttar Dinajpur district) received in 2019 by BJP candidate and Union Minister of State for Women and Child Development Debasree Chaudhuri. The TMC had by no means received both seat beforehand, however the Kharagpur loss remains to be being seen as an enormous blow for the BJP.

So, let’s get again to current occasions. Mamata has introduced she’s going to contest each from Nandigram and Bhabanipur, her constituency since 2011. Newly minted BJP ‘strongman’ Suvendu Adhikari has dedicated himself to defeating Mamata by at the least 50,000 votes on his turf, particularly Nandigram, extra usually Purba Medinipur district.

A little bit of historical past can be so as. Firoja Bibi received a by-election for this constituency in 2009. She received it once more in 2011, with a vote share of 61.21 p.c. In 2016, Suvendu contested and received with a vote share of 67.20 p.c. Firoja is now the MLA from Panskura Pashchim, which is a part of the Ghatal Lok Sabha constituency in Purba Medinipur. Nandigram is a part of the Tamluk Lok Sabha constituency in the identical district, presently represented by Suvendu’s brother Dibyendu Adhikari, who’s for the time being nonetheless a TMC parliamentarian, although an exit from the occasion could possibly be on the playing cards.

Firoja is among the unforgettable figures of the Nandigram agitation – she misplaced her son to CPM violence and is thought regionally because the ‘Mother of [a] Martyr’. She has heft and she or he has chosen to not go along with Suvendu. The huge query here’s what will occur if Mamata actually contests from Nandigram. Will her charismatic and populist attraction trump Suvendu’s native boss standing?

Factor in one thing else. The Adhikari household is {powerful} within the two Medinipur districts – Purba and Pashchim. Suvendu’s youthful brother – Soumyendu – was eliminated as administrator/chairperson of the Contai municipality and promptly left the TMC to hitch the BJP. Dibyendu, as famous, remains to be on the fence. But the patriarch of the household, Sisir Adhikari, remains to be the TMC Contai MP. He has been faraway from two necessary positions – Purba Medinipur TMC district chief and Digha Sankarpur Development Authority earlier this month. It is claimed that he’s unwell. And it’s unclear which manner he’ll bounce – however he, not Suvendu, is the important thing determine.

We now enter into the province of conjecture and opinion. Given that Suvendu barely mustered two MLAs to stop alongside him from his ‘stronghold’ and one other three from different districts, his strongman standing is questionable. On the opposite hand, when brother Soumyendu stop he took 14 councillors with him, handing the board to the BJP. That can’t be considered a definitive improvement. In the aftermath of TMC hustler Arjun Singh quitting, becoming a member of the BJP and profitable the Barrackpore Lok Sabha constituency, six municipalities shifted to the BJP. In a few months, all of them had been again with the TMC, together with BJP nationwide vice-president Mukul Roy’s turf – Kanchrapara.

So to get again to push coming to shove, Suvendu beating Mamata anyplace, together with Nandigram, is a risible proposition. Especially, when you think about the unabated rivalries between BJP old-timers, pre-eminently represented by state occasion president Dilip Ghosh, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh import, and the ‘opportunists’, like Bankura MP Saumitra Khan, who defected to the BJP whereas representing the constituency for the TMC simply earlier than the 2019 elections. As state chief of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Manch he was slapped down by Ghosh. He was reportedly rebuked by three senior BJP leaders – together with Bengal minder Kailash Vijayvargiya – for saying Ghosh can be chief minister if the BJP received Bengal. Talk of mending fences.

Which inescapably brings us to an ABP Ananda-C Voter poll revealed right this moment about upcoming polls in Assam, Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The Bengal predictions are those we need to deal with. The opinion ballot says that the TMC will win 158 seats within the 294-strong House; the BJP 102; the Left-Congress alliance 30; and, others 4.

But thereby hangs a story. It has been extensively rumoured that the ballot initially discovered the TMC would get 211 seats and the BJP 51. The ballot was revealed after a couple of days’ delay, when the brand new numbers got here in. The Ananda Bazaar Patrika (the ABP flagship), revealed a report right this moment quoting Mamata as having flagged this actual discrepancy at her 18 January rally.

Make what you’ll of this. But the true subject is that opinion polls don’t decide election outcomes. The jury hasn’t even assembled but.