In West Bengal, CPM betting on youth power to deliver
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The CPM has fielded a bunch of fresh and young faces in the West Bengal assembly election, hoping to attract youth to the party that has lost considerable ground since the 2011 defeat to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.
Agencies
The CPM has fielded a bunch of fresh and young faces in the West Bengal assembly election, hoping to attract youth to the party that has lost considerable ground since the 2011 defeat to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. The party is banking on candidates such as Meenakshi Mukherjee (Nandigram), Srijan Bhattacharya (Singur), Aishe Ghosh (Jamuria) and Dipsita Dhar (Bally) as it builds a new line of young leaders to take it forward. A party leader said nearly 70% of its candidates this time are in the age group of 25-50 years.
Trinamul Congress will disintegrate after May 2, claims Modi telegraphindia.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from telegraphindia.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday hit out at one of the weakest links in the Trinamul’s armour, the lack of industry and employment opportunities in Bengal, tying it directly with anti-land acquisition movements led by Mamata Banerjee during her days in the Opposition.
“Old industry is shut. The road for building new industry is also closed. The opportunities for doing business and generating employment is also closed. Once people from different parts of the country would come to work in the factories of Bengal. Now the youth of Bengal are going elsewhere,” said Modi addressing an election campaign meeting in Hooghly’s Tarakeswar, about 25 km from Singur, which was once floated as the destination for industrial revival of the state.