Apr 28, 2021, 11:04 IST
By Uday Basu
The eighth and last phase of polling in West Bengal across four districts, including parts of Kolkata, will be held on April 29 in the unusual backdrop of the Election Commission (EC) being literally in the dock for its handling of the entire poll process in the midst of the ravaging COVID-19 second wave. The ruling Trinamool Congress, which has been facing the toughest challenge ever from a resurgent BJP, has found a new stick to beat the EC with. It has clutched the issue of poor handling of the pandemic by the Centre and the crumbling health infrastructure to corner the BJP in the last phase when the fate of 35 seats - six in Malda, 11 each in Murshidabad and Birbhum and seven in Kolkata North - will be decided.
Apr 15, 2021, 10:26 IST
By Uday Basu
The fifth phase Assembly polling on April 17 will be held in the backdrop of firing by Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) at Sitalkuchi in Cooch Behar during polling in the fourth phase killing four persons and an explosive interview to a cross-section of the media by the Trinamool Congress poll strategist Prashant Kishor. A new propaganda war has now started between the ruling Trinamool and its principal challenger the BJP. It is a battle of perceptions that is going to influence this phase in which the fate of 45 seats spread across north and south Bengal will be decided.
West Bengal Polls: Trinamool’s Sagging Morale Apr 05, 2021, 17:30 IST
By Uday Basu
The third phase polling in West Bengal on April 6 will be a litmus test for the ruling Trinamool Congress. The 31 constituencies where the election will be held in this phase are spread across the three districts of South 24 Parganas (16 seats), Hooghly (seven seats) and Howrah (eight seats) where the Trinamool could hold its fort even when the BJP made heavy inroads into its bastions bagging 18 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
In the 2016 Assembly poll, the Trinamool’s dominance in these seats was unquestionable and it won 30 seats and the Congress managed to bag only the Amta constituency.
Mother Of all Battles in Nandigram: Mamata Harakiri or Gamble? Apr 01, 2021, 13:09 IST
By Uday Basu
The second phase polling in West Bengal on April 1 will witness in Nandigram the mother of all electoral battles of the eight-phase polls in the state. Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee is pitted against her one-time lieutenant and state minister, but now bête noire Subhendu Adhikari of the BJP in this constituency. The stakes are so high for the Trinamool that Mamata Banerjee has dropped a veritable bombshell to blow her rival into pieces, as it were. It may also prove suicidal for her.
Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s announcement earlier this week at Nandigram, the epicentre of the farmers’ movement that toppled the Left Front government in 2011, that she will contest the coming Assembly elections from there is as much dramatic as pregnant with political significance. It’s a desperate ploy to take on the rising BJP that is locked in a now-or-never battle to capture Bengal.
The Trinamool chief wants to kill several birds with one stone. She seeks to hit the BJP where it hurts it most by throwing the gauntlet at her key leader till recently and now a star BJP campaigner, Suvendu Adhikari, in his home turf. At the same time, she frantically wants to deflect the anti-incumbency factor by reviving the memories of the Nandigram-Singur movement to regain lost ground. Further, Mamata is on a rather shaky ground in her constituency in Kolkata, Bhowanipore, this time around. A sizeable section of the electorate in this sea