Asansol/Kolkata, Apr 10 (PTI) The candidates selected by the ruling Trinamool Congress in the upcoming by-elections in West Bengal — one in the Asansol Lok Sabha constituency and another in the Ballygunge assembly seat — will help the Congress, feel the nominees of the grand old party.
The TMC has nominated former Union ministers Shatrughan Sinha and Babul Supriyo as its candidates from Asansol, an industrial town in Paschim Bardhaman district, and Ballygunge in south Kolkata respectively. Both of them were BJP leaders earlier.
Congress candidates claimed that they are ‘sons of the soil’ while Sinha is an outsider and the record of Supriyo as an MP of Asansol and a central minister was not good.
“Take it from me, Shatrughan Sinha is already out of the contest. He is an outsider and the people of Asansol want a ghorer manus (local man) to represent them in Parliament. All these years, Asansol has suffered because they chose representatives who were outsiders,” Congress candidate Prasenjit Putitundy told PTI.
According to him, the April 12 contest will be between the Congress and the BJP which has also fielded ‘ghorer meye’ (daughter of the soil) Agnimitra Paul.
“I am born and brought up here. I know each and every brick of Asansol and the people know me as well. I know the issues of Asansol and what harm Babul Supriyo has caused to Asansol. I am not a neta (leader) but a beta (son),” Patitundy said.
The 42-year-old Congressman alleged that ‘outsider’ Supriyo, a singer turned politician, had messed up everything in Asansol during his two stints as an MP and minister.
Asansol has decided not to vote for the “outsider Bihari Babu” (Shatrughan Sinha), he claimed.
“Agnimitra-di is like my elder sister and she is from Asansol. But I have doubts whether she has any idea about what the people of Asansol want. She has moved to Kolkata and has been staying there for over a decade or so,” Patitundy said.
Paul is a fashion-designer-turned politician who now lives in the upmarket Ballygunge area of Kolkata. She is the MLA of the Asansol Dakshin constituency.
CPI(M) candidate Partha Mukherjee is a local man but he does not have any chance as his party has lost connection with people, the Congress nominee claimed.
The bypoll to the Asansol Lok Sabha seat having around 15 lakh voters was necessitated after Supriyo resigned as the BJP MP and joined the TMC last September.
The Congress had in the 2014 Lok Sabha election secured 4.24 per cent of votes which in 2019 came down to 1.7 per cent.
The Congress’ Ballygunge Assembly candidate Kamruzzaman Chowdhury also sees a “bright chance” for him in the by-election scheduled on April 12.
The by-poll was necessitated due to the death of popular TMC leader and minister Subrata Mukherjee.
A civil engineering consultant by profession, Chowdhury told PTI that though getting into the shoes of Subrata Mukherjee will not be an easy task, the TMC fielding Babul Supriyo for the constituency has made things easier for him.
“There’s already an anti-Babul wave in the constituency. People are opposing Babul knowing what he has done for Asansol as a central minister. He gave Asansol nothing, instead, several factories have become closed. The people of Ballygunge also do not want him. Minority voters of Ballygunge do not want him. They want us,” Chowdhury said.
Of the 2.45 lakh voters of Ballygunge, around 40 per cent are Muslims.
He claimed that as his CPI(M) rival Saira Shah Halim belongs to an elite class and is out of the reach of common voters, the party will not be able to make an impact in the polls.
Halim, a known face on prime time debate shows on national news channels, is a rights activist and niece of veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah.
Though he is hopeful that the people of Ballygunge will vote for him, Chowdhury has apprehensions about “the partisan role of the administration in favour of the ruling party candidate”.
In the 2021 Assembly elections, late Subrata Mukherjee had secured 1.06 lakh votes, while the BJP had bagged about 31,000 votes.
The TMC had won all the elections there between 2006 and 2021. Incidentally, Mukherjee had won the Ballygunge seat for the first time as a Congress candidate in a 1971 by-poll.
In 2021, the Congress had supported CPI(M) candidate Dr Fuad Halim who had secured around 5.61 per cent.
Political analyst Professor Maidul Islam of Kolkata’s Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, however, said that the Congress does not have any chance of winning the two by-elections as they have “no organisation”.
“I will be surprised if any accident helps the Congress win. It could have got some votes if it had an alliance with the CPI(M),” Islam said. PTI SCH NN NN
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
Source: The Print
