With the announcement of the West Bengal by-polls on Saturday, all eyes are on the prestigious Bhawanipur constituency, which is known as Trinamool Congress supremo. Mamata Banerjee She intends to contest elections to retain her chief ministership.
However, more interestingly, the star-studded battle being tracked by political strategists has prompted experts to raise a bigger question as to who will be the BJP candidate against Mamata Banerjee from Bhawanipur?
Many names of BJP leaders are in the news, but some strong contenders are former TMC MP Dinesh Trivedi, Rudranil Ghosh (who contested from the same seat and lost to TMC’s Sovandeb Chattopadhyay), former Meghalaya and Tripura governor and Bengal BJP. Its senior leader is Tathagata Roy. , Bolpur assembly seat candidates Anirban Ganguly (lost to TMC’s Chandra Nath Sinha), Swapna Dasgupta (lost to TMC’s Ramendu Sinhrai from Tarakeswar constituency) and BJP vice-president Pratap Banerjee.
Speaking to News18.com, State BJP President, Dilip Ghosh said, “There are many leaders who are strong and skilled to contest from Bhawanipur and some of them are named Dinesh Trivedi, Rudranil Ghosh, Tathagata Roy, Pratap Banerjee. etc. We will send their names and it is for the central leadership to decide who will be the candidate against Mamata Banerjee.
Above all, most BJP leaders in the state feel that Dinesh Trivedi could be the ideal candidate against Mamata Banerjee, as the assembly seat, which has 2,02,655 voters, is home to at least 50,000 voters who have sided with the BJP. and are largely Gujarati. Sikhs, Biharis, Marwaris and other communities along with Bengalis.
Tathagata Roy and Rudranil Ghosh are also in the race to contest against the TMC chief. Sources said that two days ago, Ghosh had held a meeting with state BJP vice-president Dr Vishwapriya Rai Choudhary and general secretary Sayantan Basu regarding the by-election.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Tathagata Roy was the BJP’s Kolkata South candidate and came second behind TMC’s Subrata Bakshi, but took a lead of 184 seats in the Bhawanipur assembly constituency.
In this year’s assembly elections, out of total eight wards of Bhawanipur, BJP was leading in two wards and in other two wards (63 and 72) BJP was trailing by a small margin. BJP was leading by 537 votes in Ward 74 and 2,092 votes in Ward 70. In Ward No. 63, BJP was trailing by a small margin of 413 votes, while in Ward No. 72, BJP was trailing by a small margin of 413 votes. .
In short, the BJP has some support base in Bhawanipur, mainly Gujaratis and Sikhs, due to which BJP leader Dinesh Trivedi is considered the ideal face to represent the constituency.
Mamata Banerjee’s Kalighat residence comes under the Bhabnipur constituency after delimitation, and has been a TMC stronghold since coming to power in West Bengal in 2011.
TMC general secretary Subrata Bakshi won the seat in 2011 by nearly 50,000 votes defeating his nearest rival Narayan Prasad Jain of the CPI(M). The TMC had contested the elections in alliance with the Congress. Bakshi then vacated the seat to make way for Mamata Banerjee, an MP, to be elected to the state assembly. She won the by-election by defeating CPI(M) rival Nandini Mukherjee by a margin of around 54,000 votes.
Later, Bakshi contested the 2011 by-election, which led to Banerjee’s resignation and subsequent election to the state assembly from Bhabnipur, and won the election.
On May 21 this year, TMC MLA Sovandeb Chattopadhyay resigned from the post to make way for the chief minister.
According to the Indian Constitution, Mamata Banerjee – who lost her Nandigram seat to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari in this assembly election – can run the state as chief minister, but will have to be elected within the next six months to retain her post.
“Article 164(4) of our constitution states that a minister who is not a member of the legislature of a state for a period of six consecutive months shall cease to be a minister on the expiration of that period. That means Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal. may become the chief minister, but as per the constitution she has to be elected within those six months for her to continue,” said political expert Kapil Thakur. “If she is not elected at the end of six months, she will lose her post. “
Since Sovandeb Chattopadhyay is an elected MLA, he has to win a seat within six months to retain his MLA membership or he can enter the Legislative Assembly through the ‘Legislative Council’. The Upper House, abandoned by the Left parties in the State Assembly, was abolished in 1969 for ‘backdoor entry into the Assembly’ and the Council being a symbol of elitism.
On 2 May, TMC leader Sovandeb Chattopadhyay won from Bhawanipur seat defeating BJP’s Rudranil Ghosh.
Chattopadhyay’s selection was personally decided by Banerjee as she felt she was able to retain the seat despite her decision to contest from Nandigram and not from her own constituency.
Unknown to many, Chattopadhyay was a boxer during his college days and despite his hectic schedule, he still did not miss a boxing championship including International Boxing Federation (IBF), World Boxing Federation (WBA).
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