Mamata Banerjee on Thursday went into a huddle with eight Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) councillors — all from the Trinamul Congress — in her Bhabanipur Assembly constituency and reportedly asked them to ensure handsome leads for the chief minister in the election next year.
In the general election last year, the BJP had drastically lowered the gap with Trinamul in the Bhabanipur segment of the Kolkata Dakshin Lok Sabha seat by over 50,000 votes. The TMC’s lead was narrowed to 8,297 votes in 2024 from 58,832 votes in the September 2021 bypoll that Mamata had won.
Booth-wise data from the Election Commission of India reveal that the BJP led from 149 of 269 booths in the diverse, cosmopolitan Assembly segment spread over a part of Chowringhee in the north to Kalighat in the south.
The eight councillors who met the Trinamul chairperson were Susmita Bhattacharya (ward 63), Ashim Bose (ward 70), Papia Singh (ward 71), Sandip Bakshi (ward 72), Kajari Banerjee (ward 73), Debalina Biswas (ward 74), Shamima Khan (ward 77) and Firhad Hakim (ward 82). The meeting took place soon after the extended state conference of the TMC at the Netaji Indoor Stadium.
Hakim is the urban development minister and the Calcutta mayor. Bakshi is the brother of the old guard’s grand marshal, the party’s state president Subrata Bakshi, while Banerjee is Mamata’s sister-in-law.
“The voter list scrutiny directions were repeated, but the main message was to leave no stone unturned to ensure handsome leads from all eight, and a historic win for her (Mamata),” said an insider. He said the role of Hakim, Khan, and Banerjee in delivering leads last summer, while all the others failed, was appreciated.
The three Trinamool-led wards are 73 (parts of Bhowanipore, Patuapara, and Kalighat), 77 (parts of Kidderpore), and 82 (Chetla).
“This is a prestige battle for us. More so if Suvendu Adhikari lives up to his promise of contesting from Bhabanipur,” said the insider.
“Special focus will be on the five wards the BJP led in,” he added.
The five are 63 (parts of Chowringhee, Taltala, Park Street, Shakespeare Sarani, the Maidan, and Hastings), 70 (Jadu Babu’s Bazaar), 71 (Bhowanipore), 72 (Chakraberia, Padmapukur, and Bakulbagan), and74 (Alipore).
“Didi said all problems of the people must be solved, all grievances addressed — to the extent possible — in those five wards in the year or so that remains,” he added. Old guard big guns Hakim, Subrata Bakshi and minister Aroop Biswas would personally handle the election-preparedness ofthe constituency.
One of Trinamul’s Kolkata Dakshin backroom boys, admitted to being astounded by the segment results last summer.
“It was a shocker. Especially because Didi led from all eight in September 2021, in a first for the constituency since 2014. Anything to do with Bhabanipur and Kolkata Dakshin is a matter of pride for us. Both are home to Didi and (her nephew and heir apparent) Abhishek (Banerjee), besides most in our senior leadership,” he said. Mamata has been the Bhabanipur MLA since 2011, and was a six-term Kolkata Dakshin MP since 1991.
Nearly one out of every two Bhabanipur electors is a non-Bengali. The constituency has large numbers of Punjabis, Gujaratis, Biharis, Marathis, Odiyas, Marwaris, and people from Uttar Pradesh, besides some from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, andAndhra Pradesh.
The socio-economically diverse constituency has around 80 per cent non-Muslim votes, with Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains in large numbers.
“There is a chunk of non-Bengali, non-Muslimvoters who voted in favour of the BJP in the Lok Sabha election. This might not happen in the Assembly or civic polls, as we have often seen in the past,” hoped aTMC insider.
Trinamul fared poorly — despite the statewide sweep — in a vast majority of urban areas in the general election last summer, trailing substantially in 69 of the state’s 125 civic bodies.
Overall, Trinamul’s lead in Assembly segments went down to 192 this general election, from 215 in 2021, and that of the BJP went up to 90 from 77. That is in stark contrast to the Lok Sabha outcome, in which Trinamool bagged 29 seats (including all five in and around Calcutta), compared to the BJP’s 12.