Hyderabad: Nandigram is for the moment, done and dusted. As Bengal slips into the third phase of polls for 31 Assembly seats on Tuesday, it now turns to be the real acid test for the ruling Trinamool Congress. And, holding the key to that are the 16 Assembly seats of South 24 Parganas.
South 24 Parganas has been a bastion of Mamata Banerjee for quite some time now and it is one of the very few districts in the state, which did not witness any bleeding during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
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The 2019 polls had indeed seen a spectacular result by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had bagged 18 out of the state's 42 Lok Sabha seats. But, the party did not get any from South 24 Parganas. More so, BJP did not even register a lead in any of the 31 Assembly segments, leaving Mamata Banerjee enough space to breathe some sigh of relief.
But then came severe cyclonic storm Amphan in May, 2020.
The storm, which lashed across six districts of Bengal, had particularly battered the two coastal districts of North and South 24 Parganas. The relief and restoration work, which ensued after the devastation, had created a major issue among thousands. Though aimed at rebuilding the shattered lives and dwellings of the people of South 24 Parganas district, what it eventually did was, to give rise to rampant accusation of nepotism and favouritism. A mere peep into any village road of Canning Purba, Raidighi, Falta, Canning Paschim or Kultali Assembly seat areas would throw up tales of mistrust and anger against local panchayat functionaries. Incidentally, most of the panchayats in the district are controlled by the ruling Trinamool Congress. But, there is again a twist in the tale.
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Though many have allegations against lower rung Trinamool Congress functionaries, most don't blame Mamata Banerjee for the mess, or to be more precise, the loot of government relief funds and material. The opposition BJP has been trying hard since May last year to drive hard the fact that Mamata means Trinamool Congress. Political watchers say, some voters might have thought about a shift of stance from Trinamool to BJP, but then came Pirzada Abbas Siddiqui of Furfura Sharif with his Indian Secular Front (ISF).
The arithmetic of religious polarisation of votes got both murkier and haywire at the same time. Assembly seats like Mahestala, Canning, Baruipur, Diamond Harbour or Magrahat has high concentration of minority Muslim votes and Siddiqui's emergence on the eleciton spectrum made things tough for BJP. Eventually, the road for Mamata again turned smooth. Will she be able to secure her 2019 position in the key rural seats of South 24 Parganas? The question is hanging heavy across the salty backwaters of Sunderbans.
The eight seats of Hooghly district present another peculiar situation for the opposition BJP. In some seats, the saffron party has given tickets to turncoats like Biswanath Karak in Goghat or have fielded newbies like Swapan Dasgupta from Tarakeshwar. Pitted against them are relatively clean image candidates of the Trinamool Congress as well as the Sanjukta Morcha (United Alliance). Tuesday's contest is only getting keener by the hour.
Will Mamata pass her first litmus test with flying colours from South 24 Parganas as in 2019? Will BJP make a serious dent in the Trinamool stronghold and upset poll equations? Will the ISF make its presence felt and make serious dents? The results will be out on May 2.
