West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said her INDIA bloc allies, Congress and CPI(M), were “BJP agents” in the state, underlining once again that her support for them was at a national level. She cautioned people in the state against voting for the other two parties and said one vote for them against the TMC means giving away two votes to the BJP.
Banerjee said she will not be supporting the Congress and CPI(M) in Bengal, and that voting for any other party in the state means making the BJP more powerful. “I am hearing that some people are saying here that we are INDIA alliance, vote for us. Let me tell them that the INDIA alliance is in Delhi, not here. The Congress, CPM should not form the INDIA alliance here. Giving even one vote to Congress against TMC means giving two votes to BJP. Voting for any other party here means making BJP more powerful,” she said in Murshidabad district, which has a strong Congress-CPI(M) presence.
State Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and CPI(M) state secretary Md Salim are contesting from Berhampore and Murshidabad. After painstaking discussions over seat-sharing with the Congress for months, the TMC boss decided to contest the general elections alone. In the run-up to the polls, she has often accused the Congress and the Left of joining hands to “assist” the BJP in Bengal.
One of the major reasons for Mamata’s frequent outbursts against her national allies could be her concerns about the Muslim vote bank in Bengal, which accounts for at least 28 per cent of the state’s total population. Traditionally, the ruling parties of Bengal – both the Left and TMC – have a well-consolidated Muslim vote and any split in this can put Mamata in trouble.
Now, if past election results are analysed, the Congress, too, had been a dominating political force in Muslim-majority districts like Murshidabad, Malda and parts of Birbhum. This was the same for the Left in some districts where Muslims and tribals are high in vote share percentage.
The Congress and Left sharing a stage can make the Muslim vote bank think that voting for either will make the alliance stronger. So, now that the TMC wields strong political influence among the Muslims in the state, Mamata is worried that any confusion caused by the national alliance could jeopardise the TMC’s chances.
Voting for the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections kicked off in Bengal with three constituencies in the northern parts – Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar – going to polls. The elections in the state will be held in all seven phases till June 1.
With the largest deployment of central armed police forces in the state for the elections, sporadic violence was reported from Cooch Behar that is presently represented by the BJP’s Nishith Pramanik. Both the parties have accused each other after an incident of stone pelting was reported from the constituency’s Chandamari area.
