Can Mimi Chakraborty do a Mamata of 1984 in Jadavpur?

Jadavpur: The prestigious Jadavpur Parliamentary constituency in Bengal has never blessed a political party for a third consecutive term. Can the Trinamool Congress buck the trend?

As this question was posed to an elderly TMC worker, his mind flashed back to 1984 — when a young woman leader defeated an erudite lawyer and Communist leader.

The script is somewhat similar in 2019, with addition of a new actor. The TMC is banking on 30-year-old Bengali film-star Mimi Chakraborty for a third consecutive win in Jadavpur, where party chief Mamata Banerjee, then a feisty young Congress leader, had trounced CPI(M) veteran and noted lawyer Somnath Chatterjee in 1984. And this time, TMC's Chakraborty faces a stiff challenge from another lawyer — former Kolkata Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya of the CPI(M). The BJP, in a bid to win the seat riding on its growing popularity, has fielded Anupam Hazra, a TMC Parliamentarian in the outgoing Lok Sabha who switched sides before the election.

TMC this time fielded Chakraborty in place of Sugata Bose, a Harvard professor who won the seat for the party in 2014. Banerjee said he has not been allowed to contest the elections this time by his university.

Roadshows and meetings by the young actor-turned-politician in the constituency have drawn large crowds and the TMC leadership is claiming that the popularity of the candidate will be reflected in the results. They are asserting that she will win by a bigger margin than her renowned predecessor from the family of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who won by a little over 1.25 lakh votes.

TMC had won the seat in 2009 too, when singer and poet Kabir Suman was its candidate.

The TMC leadership is confident that the formidable election machinery of the party will work cohesively to ensure a resounding win for their candidate. Jadavpur spreads

across south-eastern parts of Kolkata as also semi-urban areas in the vicinity and

rural areas of Bhangar and Baruipur. With agency inputs