KOLKATA: Candidates of the four major political parties of West Bengal made last-minute door-to-door visits to reach out to the electorate on the last day of campaigning for the Uluberia Lok Sabha and Noapara Vidhan Sabha bypolls on Saturday. The two constituencies would go to polls on Monday and results will be declared on February 1.
Noapara, which was one of the few constituencies in south Bengal that the ruling party lost in the 2016 Assembly elections, is likely to witness power tussle between BJP leader Mukul Roy and TMC’s Bhatpara MLA Arjun Singh. A power vacuum was created in Kolkata’s northern suburban Barrackpore industrial belt, of which Noapara is a part, after local strongman and TMC co-founder Mukul Roy jumped the ship to BJP. According to political observers, Arjun Singh is trying hard to fill that vacuum and even called Roy a ‘traitor’ publicly for quitting TMC.
The constituency also witnessed pitched political drama after BJP hurriedly declared TMC’s former Noapara MLA and Arjun Singh’s archrival Manju Basu as its candidate for the constituency. However, Basu expressed shock on finding her name on the BJP list and said she was loyal to party supremo Mamata Banerjee, leaving state BJP leaders red-faced.
On the other hand, the game in Uluberia is of majority and minority with deceased TMC MP Sultan Ahmed’s wife Sajda Ahmed banking on her husband’s legacy among the 43 per cent Muslim voters of the constituency while the BJP trying to garner the 55 per cent Hindu votes of the constituency by capitalising on communal polarisation following Dhulagarh riots in neighbouring Howrah Lok Sabha constituency in 2016. The party’s central leaders including national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya have campaigned for their candidate Anupam Mallik.
The by-elections were necessitated after Noapara MLA Madhusudhan Ghose of Congress died after a protracted illness due to cancer at an age of 79 on August 18 last year whereas Uluberia MP Sultan Ahmed of TMC died of cardiac arrest at an age of 64 on September 4.