In West Bengal, the high voltage election campaigning of both the claimants of power i.e. Trinamool Congress and BJP came to a halt on Thursday before the first phase of voting on Saturday. But during this period, during the campaign of both the parties, the issues related to the common people remained marginalized in the noise of ‘Khela Hobe’ and allegations and counter-allegations.
In the first phase, voting is being held for 30 seats in Bankura, Purulia and Jhargram districts apart from East and West Medinipur.
Even on the last day of campaigning, where Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh to Mithun Chakraborty held rallies on the one hand, on the other hand, TMC’s star campaigner Mamta Banerjee addressed four rallies using helicopters and wheelchairs.
Among the seats to be voted on in the first round, there are 23 seats in the notorious area known as Jungle Mahal.
The remaining seven seats are in East Medinipur. Voting on the remaining seats of the area will be held on April 1 in the second phase. These include the high-profile seat of Nandigram where Mamata Banerjee is competing with Shubhendu Adhikari, the closest she ever had.
Apart from Purulia, the most important seats of this round include Chhatna seat of Bankura and Kharagpur in West Medinipur district and Medinipur seat of East Medinipur.
The importance of Purulia and Chhatna is more because the margin of victory here in the 2016 elections was less than five thousand votes. The Purulia seat was then won by Congress’s Sudeep Mukherjee and the Chhatna seat was occupied by the Left’s ally RSP.
In 2016, state BJP President Dilip Ghosh won Kharagpur seat. But in the by-election held here after TMC won the Lok Sabha elections in the year 2019, TMC took this seat.
The TMC has fielded Dinesen Rai, the candidate who won the by-election this time.
Where does the Left that ruled Bengal for decades stand today?
Instead of former MLA Mrigendra Nath Maiti on Medinipur seat, actress Jun Malia’s contest on the TMC ticket has become interesting here.
In the first phase, polling will be held in seven out of 16 seats in East Medinipur, six out of 15 seats in West Medinipur and four out of 12 seats in Bankura, while all nine seats of Purulia and all four seats of Jhargram will be voted in this round.
At present, 191 candidates are in the fray for the 30 seats of this round. There are 21 women among them. Among these candidates, criminal cases are registered against one-fourth, while 19 millionaires are also included in the race.
The average assets of the candidates in the first round are around 43.77 lakh rupees and about half of them are graduates.
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