The Nirvachan Sadan’s Sunday dispatch from Vigyan Bhavan, detailing a two-phase Bengal Assembly polls on April 23 and 29, was met with a sharpened rhetorical bayonet from the ruling Trinamool Congress’s second-rung leadership.
The definitive public reaction from the party’s top two leaders — chief minister and party supremo Mamata Banerjee, and her nephew, MP and the party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee — is reserved for Monday afternoon.
Both Mamata and Abhishek are expected to use a massive protest march from College Square to Esplanade, primarily targeting the spiralling LPG crisis in the wake of the West Asia conflict, to frame their formal indictment of the poll schedule.
In the high-stakes political theatre of Bengal, the ruling Trinamool — seeking to return to power for the fourth consecutive term — is likely to seamlessly turn a kitchen-budget catastrophe into a potent campaign weapon against the Election Commission-BJP “nexus”.
On Sunday, Trinamool spokesperson Arup Chakraborty tore into the poll panel over the two phases in this Assembly elections.
“The number of phases is solely a reflection of what the BJP, the master, wants from its servant, the EC,” Chakraborty charged, framing chief electoral officer Gyanesh Kumar and his team as mere flunkeys to the BJP.
In 2021, Bengal had voted in a record eight-phased Assembly polls during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Trinamool state general secretary Kunal Ghosh reminded people of the eight-phased elections in 2021.
“When everybody other than the BJP asked for the least possible number of phases in 2021, which was in the peak of the devastating second wave of Covid-19, the Election Commission thrust upon Bengal eight phases and refused to relent despite judicial reprimand (from Madras High Court), endangering the lives of millions. This time, the BJP asked for one or two (phases), and the commission delivered two. They have reduced themselves to a bad, sad joke,” Ghosh said.
Beneath the sound and fury of the phase-wars, the Trinamool supreme leadership has all but finalised its candidate lists for the 294 seats. The party might make a grand announcement of its candidates on Tuesday, a source said.
“We will come to power again, irrespective of the number of phases... one or two or eight or a dozen,” Ghosh noted, asserting the year-round presence of Trinamool workers on the ground compared to the near-total absence of the BJP.
He dismissed the poll schedule as a logistical gimmick that failed to account for the “crisis-time loyalty” that the Trinamool Congress has built through flagship welfare schemes and constant presence among the people of the state.
Ghosh also predicted a precipitous drop for the saffron camp, suggesting the BJP will be throttled down to just 27 seats — a far cry from the 77 the BJP managed in 2021.