Strong organisation, connect with masses behind TMC wave in Kolkata
KOLKATA: Organisational strength and round-the-year connect with people helped the Trinamool Congress to steal a march on the BJP despite the saffron camp bringing in its national leaders to woo voters. Political analysts opined that these two factors helped TMC in routing the BJP from all 11 seats in Kolkata.
Subrata Mukherjee, who is celebrating the golden jubilee of his participation in electoral politics, defeated his nearest BJP rival Loknath Chatterjee in Ballygunge Assembly seat by 75, 369 votes. Mukherjee was the youngest minister in Siddhartha Shankar Roy's Cabinet between 1972-77.
Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay defeated Rudranil Ghosh of BJP from Bhowanipore seat by 28, 719 votes. Mamata Banerjee shifted Chattopadhyay to Bhowanipore from Rashbehari constituency after she decided to contest from Nandigram. Chatterjee had been elected twice from Rashbehari seat in 2011 and 2016. The poll percentage in South Kolkata, where election was held on April 26, had dropped considerably as people, particularly the elderly, refused to step out of their homes on the day of the polls due to the surge in Covid cases. "As Trinamool's organisation is very strong, it had organised its supporters to cast their votes. The BJP had failed to deploy polling agents in all the booths," analysts opined.
In Entally, Swarnakamal Saha, two-time MLA defeated Priyanka Tibrewal of BJP by 58, 257 votes. Nayana Bandyopadhyay, TMC candidate from Chowringhee seat defeated Debdatta Majhi of BJP by 45, 344 votes. Both the constituencies have mixed population. As BJP did not have organizational strength, it failed to gain people's support.
Vivek Gupta, in his inaugural debut, defeated Meena Devi Purohit by 13, 743 votes from Jorasanko Assembly seat. The party's impeccable organisational strength has helped Gupta to win the seat, which is considered to be a BJP stronghold. Dr Shashi Panja defeated Sandipan Biswas of BJP by 22,520 votes in Shyampukur Assembly seat. BJP took a lead of over 2,500 votes in 2019 Lok Sabha election from the area.
Debashis Kumar and Atin Ghosh, both of whom were members of Board of Administrators of Kolkata Municipal Corporation defeated their BJP rivals by 21, 414 votes and 35, 390 in their inaugural debut. They were pitted against Subrata Saha, a retired Lieutenant General of BJP in Rashbehari seat and Shibaji Singha Roy of BJP in Kashipur-Belgachia seat.
In Behala West, Partha Chatterjee defeated Srabanti Chatterjee of BJP by 50, 864 votes while Ratna Chatterjee of Trinamool defeated Payel Sarkar of BJP by 37, 428 votes in her inaugural debut.
Aroop Biswas defeated Babul Supriyo of BJP from Tollygunge seat by 50, 080 votes while Debabrata Majumdar defeated Sujan Chakraborty of CPI(M) by 38, 879 votes in Jadavpur seat.
Firhad Hakim defeated Awad Kishore Gupta of BJP by 68, 554 votes in Kolkata Port.
"The organisation has paid us dividend. We always stand by the people in need and so our voters braving all odds went to the polling stations and cast their votes in our favour," Hakim said.
