With the Election Commission on Tuesday announcing the schedule for the Assembly polls in West Bengal, the countdown has now begun to what will be the most drawn-out of elections - spread over more than three weeks, beginning April 18. The six-phase polls end on May 10.
The coming days will witness frenetic activity in the camps of the contending parties, who have already started giving a final shape to their election manifestos as well as preparing their list of candidates before they launch on a hectic spree of campaigning for what is being widely considered as the most crucial election in the State in recent times.
The question is whether the Trinamool Congress, still basking in the glory of its successes in recent polls, will be able to not only hold on to, but also consolidate the gains it has registered with the Congress as alliance partner, or will the Left Front, with its sights on an eighth term in power, be able to retrieve the political space it has yielded over the past three years and notch up ascendancy in fortunes.
Never in the past elections has the Trinamool camp exuded the confidence of coming to power as it is exuding this time around, even though memories are yet to fade of the 2001 Assembly poll when hopes of a runaway success with the Congress in tow as an electoral ally came crashing down.
Discernible signs of jitters within the party, notwithstanding the innuendoes in its chief Mamata Banerjee remarks of “the journey towards victory for change,” cannot be missed. They come from the one not just in a rush to assume stewardship at Writers' Building, but who seems to have taken as won a battle that is yet to begin.
The Left Front has been more circumspect, even though the massive turnout at the rally in the city from where it had launched its electoral campaign on February 13 - arguably the biggest congregation of people here in recent - has given it reasons to believe that the much awaited turn-around is well on its way.
The series of setbacks it has suffered in elections held in the State, beginning from the May 2008 rural polls, may have shaken it out of the complacency born of being in power for more than three decades. The Left Front's list of nominees is expected to be announced by mid-March. Its election manifesto should also be ready by then.
But given that relations at the State level between the two electoral partners in the Opposition - the Trinamool and the Congress - have not been hunky-dory, the finalisation of candidates of the alliance is likely be less smooth an exercise than the Left Front's even though Ms. Banerjee maintains that “there is no reason for worry.”
The Congress has staked its claims for 98 seats (a third of the total Assembly constituencies) but its larger partner that will finally call the shots is in no mood to oblige. How much of a climb-down the Congress is ready for without compromising on the “respect” that it believes is its due remains to be seen.
