Darjeeling populace turn up in droves for Martyrs’ Day

The huge turnout from Darjeeling district to attend the Martyrs’ Day rally of Trinamool Congress on Thursday proves beyond doubt that Mamata Banerjee is successful in winning the confidence of people from the hills.

Compared to that of only 300 people from the hills attending the Martyrs’ Day rally in 2015, a remarkable rise has been witnessed this time as around 1,000 residents of Darjeeling district came to listen to the Trinamool Congress supremo in the mammoth rally.

According to the party’s representatives from the district, this is the all time record in terms of people turning up from Darjeeling to attend the rally. It shows that, slowly but steadily, the party is gradaually gaining ground in the hills and it was also proved in the results of the 2016 Assembly elections. The percentage of vote of Trinamool Congress in Darjeeling district has gone up to 41.22 per cent in the 2016 Assembly elections while it was only 20.52 per cent in 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Though the party had not been able to bag any of the five Assembly seats in the district, it had come up to the second position in Darjeeling, Kurseong, Matigara- Naxalbari, Siliguri and Phansidewa Assembly constituencies.

It may be mentioned that in Darjeeling Assembly seat the party’s nominee Sarada Rai Subba had got 28.53 percentage of votes where the poll percentage in favour of Trinamool Congress was only 18.50 in the 2014 Parliamentary elections. The situation was quite same as that of in Kurseong where the party had got 32.74 percentage of votes.

People from Darjeeling have witnessed the developmaent that took place in the hills after the change of guard in the state and several visits of Banerjee in the past five years have made them confident about the will of the present government to bring back the “lost glory of the hills”.