Barrackpore (North 24 Parganas): There is a feeling among people nationally that celebrity political candidates coming from the silver screen world just vanish out from their constituencies after they elected either as an MP or as an MLA.
However, Congress’s celebrity candidate, Late Sunil Dutt had been an exception. Once he stepped into politics leaving aside his silver screen career, he took his new assignment very seriously. A four-time MP from Mumbai (North West) Lok Sabha constituency in Maharashtra, is still remembered with respect as “Dutt Sahab” even after 16 years of his death. Even the ardent critics of Congress regard Dutt for his passionate nurturing of his constituency. An unparalleled actor, both in romantic and character roles, Dutt had always received public accolades as a politician.
A popular Bengali film director, Raj Chakraborty, is contesting as a Trinamool Congress candidate from Barrackpore assembly constituency, in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal this time. Now the question again is that if elected like many other celebrity candidates in the past will vanish from the scene? Or will he take up his assignment seriously and turn out to be “Dutt Sahab” of Barrackpore, a once traditional Left bastion which shifted to Trinamool since 2009.
However, Chakraborty does not enter into any comparative analysis game with anyone. “I am myself and I do not want to be anyone’s prototype. I am contesting as a foot soldier of our dear chief minister, Mamata Banerjee. But I can promise that if I am elected I will prove the general perception about celebrity public representatives wrong,” Chakraborty told ETV Bharat.
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An original resident of Barrackpore — adjacent Halisahar, Chakraborty prefers to be identified as “Raju — the son of the turf” among the voters rather than as a celebrity film director.
He starts his campaign every day sharp at 8 AM. Instead of using a vehicle to move around, he prefers to walk through to personally interact with the voters. “This is my style to create a voters’ connect. On average, he is walking around 15 kilometres a day doing a door-to-door campaign,” Chakraborty told ETV Bharat.
Barrackpore, being a hamlet of mixed religious and lingual culture, always has a different kind of voting calculation. His fight is tough for many reasons. The first is the disgruntlement of a section of the local Trinamool leadership over the selection of candidate. Secondly, the local BJP Lok Sabha member, Arjun Singh is always known as a tough man. However, Chakraborty does not want to keep those factors in mind right at this moment. “I am confident about my victory. My only goal is to see Mamata Banerjee as the chief minister of West Bengal for the third time,” he said.
