L K Advani and Narendra Modi. Nitin Gadkari and Rajnath Singh. Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj. Rajnath Singh, Vinay Katiyar and Hema Malini. BJP leaders of North Bengal cannot remember when such a line-up of central leaders went there to campaign for their candidates. All of them arrived over the past week.
Its confidence boosted by the Darjeeling victory in the parliamentary elections, the BJP is targeting at least 12 of North Bengal’s 54 Assembly seats, including Madarihat, Kumargram, Nagrakata and Dhupguri in Jalpaiguri, Toofangunj in Cooch Behar, Habibpur in Malda and Kalchini in Darjeeling.
Modi’s visit marked his first campaign ever in the state. He addressed rallies at Madarihat, Dhupguri and Toofangunj and at each place he compared Gujarat and West Bengal to show how far his state is ahead in development. At Dhupguri, he pointed at a hospital: “Is it a hospital? It itself is dead. How can it provide treatment to those who are living? This is what you have got after 34 years of Left rule.”
One seat the BJP is confident of snagging is Madarihat. In the last parliamentary polls its candidate for Jalpaiguri, Manoj Tigga, led the winner, the CPM’s Mahendra Nath Roy. Tigga is the BJP candidate for Madarihat this time and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has promised him support. Of the 2 lakh voters, 20,000 are Nepalese, most of them loyal to the Gorkha cause.
Segment-wise, the BJP bagged large vote shares also in Dhupguri (25,000) and Kumargram (21,000) and in Kalchini (46,000).
“After the votes we got in the parliamentary elections and last civic elections, couples with our organisational strength in North Bengal, we hope to do well,” says Rabindra Narayan Choudhury, Jalpaiguri district BJP president.
The CPM dismisses the number of star campaigners. “Anybody can address rallies anywhere. It’s the people who will have the last word,” says Rabin Deb, CPM state secretariat member.
The BJP has been striving to increase its presence in Bengal. Its Nava Jagran Yatra, 2,000 km from Cooch Behar to Kolkata on January 30 to February 15, culminated with an address by four CMs, Advani, Nitin Gadkatri and Jaitley. The Rashtriya Ekta Yatra to Lal Chowk, Srinagar, began from Kolkata, flagged off by Gadkari.
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