The deafening sound of drums shatters the early morning silence in the sleepy riverine town of Midnapore as a band of drummers accompanying the BJP candidate Dilip Ghosh herald his entry into a warren of narrow alleys. Cries of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ greet the procession as he passes by the old buildings lining the lanes.
Like his ascent in politics — from an RSS organiser to the BJP’s State president — Mr. Ghosh strides briskly, well aware of the vast ground he has to cover to narrow the gap on his veteran Trinamool Congress (TMC) rival before the constituency votes on May 12.
“My opponent is a former cabinet minister and Rajya Sabha MP Manas Bhunia,” Mr. Ghosh said, not shying away from acknowledging the odds he is facing. It was the rise of the BJP in the region, that spurred the State’s ruling party to drop singer-actor Sandhya Roy and instead field the 67-year-old Dr. Bhunia, who had represented Sabang Assembly constituency in the region for 30 years.
Walking laboriously towards a stage where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was scheduled to address a rally at Debra, Dr. Bhunia repeatedly referred to Ms. Banerjee as “our supreme leader”.
“I have not taken any contest lightly in my life. It was the decision of our supreme leader that I should contest the Lok Sabha seat and so I am ready for the challenge,” Dr. Bhunia said. However, he tactfully refrained from acknowledging Mr. Ghosh as his main rival.
“There are eight candidates contesting against me and I consider all of them as my opponents,” he said. In their campaign speeches rallying support for Dr. Bhunia, TMC leaders make it a point to stress the fact that he is already in Parliament as a Rajya Sabha member and would remain an MP irrespective of the result.
Of the seven assembly segments that comprise Medinipur Lok Sabha seat, Mr. Ghosh had won Kharagpur in the 2016 Assembly polls, while six went to the TMC. What makes the contest interesting is that in the panchayat polls of 2018, the saffron party made inroads in some other areas of the constituency as well.
The adjoining town of Bankura looks older than Midnapore with narrower lanes and temples that date back centuries earlier. The political narrative, however, is very similar.
Like Midnapore, Bankura was once among the regions affected by Left wing extremism. While there have been no incidents of Maoist violence in the area in the past few years, the sight of women carrying bundles of tendu leaves across the forest serves as a reminder that the issues which led to the rise of extremism in the region still remain unresolved.
Here too, the TMC has replaced its sitting MP Sreemati Dev Varma, better known as Moon Moon Sen, with one of the party’s senior leaders, Subrata Mukherjee. Mr. Mukherjee, a former Mayor of Kolkata, has held the portfolios of Panchayat and Public Health Engineering in the State .
Although Mr. Mukherjee’s main contender is Subhas Sarkar of the BJP, Communist Party of India(Marxist) heavyweight Amiya Patra cannot be underestimated. While Mr. Sarkar, a vice president of the State unit of the BJP, is a well-known medical practitioner, Mr. Patra remains a popular leader and is confident of getting votes from the rural parts of the constituency.
That Bankura, located almost 200 km from Kolkata, is poised for a tight contest can be gauged by the fact that between the evening of May 8 and afternoon of May 9, the top leadership of all three parties, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Ms. Banerjee and CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury held public meetings here.
Bankura is also one of the drier regions of the State. Campaigning at Lakhanpur village in Saltora bloc, Mr. Mukherjee had to face agitated villagers, who wanted the area’s water crisis to be resolved.
“In 60% areas we have dealt with the problem of drinking water... for the remaining, work is going in full swing,” Mr. Mukherjee asserted, exuding confidence that the government’s development work would stand him in good stead.
