Mamata meets party MPs, district leaders to firm up election strategies

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Friday asked her party MPs to go to the areas outside their constituencies to canvass for the candidates in the forthcoming Assembly elections.

Banerjee on Friday met the MPs at her Kalighat residence.

Subhendu Adhikari who is an MP is contesting from Nandigram is also the party’s in charge in Murshidabad.

Party MPs including Mukul Roy, Kalyan Banerjee, Subrata Bakshi, Deepak Adhikary (Deb), Sandhya Roy, Idris Ali and Prasun Banerjee were present in Friday’s meeting. 

The ministers, Subrata Mukherjee, Partha Chatterjee, Sashi Panja, Arup Biswas, Firhad Hakim and Manish Gupta were also present. Mayor Sovan Chatterjee and his counterpart in Bidhannagar, Sabyasachi Dutta also attended the meeting.

Banerjee does not want to take any chance and wants to involve all the leaders and workers. “Complacency has no place in Trinamool Congress and we should work together to ensure victory to the candidates,” she said. The MPs will take part in rallies, meetings and street corners. Each Lok Sabha seat has seven Assembly segments.

During meeting with the District leaders, Banerjee asked to bury all differences and work together. 

There are pockets where infighting still persists. Party insiders said that once the candidates would start filing nominations, the differences would go and all would work to ensure victory of the candidates. 

“What will happen if a Congress or CPI(M) candidate is elected from a seat defeating our candidate. It will not benefit the workers and local leaders. So all will work together to ensure victory of the candidates,” a leader from the district said.

Trinamool Congress leaders are calculating the percentage of votes the party is expecting in areas dominated by Congress where CPI(M) candidates have been fielded. Party leaders firmly believe that genuine Congress voters cannot vote for Left candidates because of the long history of party’s tussle with the Left.

In the meeting Banerjee said that the leaders should highlight the work that had been taken up by the State government for the benefit of the common people. Projects like Kanyashree which have been lauded by the Centre would be highlighted by the speakers. Sabuj Sathi, Khadyashri and achievements of the Agriculure department, Backward Classes department in giving caste certificates would be highlighted. 

For Kolkata and Rajarhat, speakers would highlight the beautification drives taken up by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO). 

To woo voters of 11 seats in Kolkata, the schemes taken up by KMC like online payment of taxes, online sanction of building plans license would be highlighted.