Lok Sabha Elections 2024: Commander of Trinamool's Sena confident of cakewalk

Maheshtala(West Bengal): “I am not here to plead for votes. You all are my family. No one pleads before family for votes,” Abhishek Banerjee said as he climbed onto the roof of an SUV and addressed the cheering crowd at Maheshtala in the Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha constituency of West Bengal. “I have come to place before you all a demand. I have set a target for a winning margin of four lakh votes, and I expect this Assembly segment to be among the top three in giving the leads.”

Mamata Banerjee’s heir apparent and the general secretary of the Trinamool Congress has addressed as many as 72 rallies and roadshows across West Bengal ever since the party launched the campaign on March 10, almost a week before the Election Commission announced the schedule of the Lok Sabha Elections. He campaigned for most of the party’s candidates contesting in the 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state and concluded the two-month-and-twenty-day-long electioneering with two roadshows in his pocket borough, Diamond Harbour, on Thursday.

"I can tell you that people have rejected the BJP, not only because it has insulted the culture of West Bengal, but also because it blocked the funds for the rural job scheme and other programmes in the state,” Abhishek said, adding: “There will be a change in New Delhi after June 4.”

The TMC supremo’s 37-year-old nephew was elected to the Lok Sabha from Diamond Harbour twice, first in 2014 with a modest margin of over 71,000 votes against CPM’s Abul Hasnat and then in 2019 with a whopping margin of over 3,20,000 votes against the BJP’s Nilanjan Roy.

The TMC supremo’s 37-year-old nephew was elected to the Lok Sabha from Diamond Harbour twice, first in 2014.

The TMC’s ‘Number Two’, whom his political opponents often deride as ‘Bhaipo (nephew)’, is confident to have a cakewalk in Diamond Harbour this time too.

To take on him, the BJP has fielded Abhijit Das, who had come third in the constituency both in 2009 with just 2.88% votes and in 2014 with 15.92% votes. Abhishek’s vote percentage rose from 40.31% in 2014 to 56.15% in 2019.

The BJP top brass, be it Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Union Home Minister Amit Shah, avoided coming to Diamond Harbour even as the saffron party ran a campaign blitzkrieg in the rest of West Bengal over the past two-and-a-half months.

That the BJP chose a ‘weak candidate’ in Diamond Harbour was cited by the Congress and the CPM leaders in the state as proof of the "secret understanding" between the saffron party and the TMC in West Bengal.

He and his wife Rujira were questioned by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with an alleged coal scam. The Congress and the CPM in West Bengal alleged that the BJP forced the TMC to go solo in the state, without any electoral understanding with the I.N.D.I.A constituents, by using the probe against him by the central agencies in connection with the allegations of corruption as a ‘Sword of Damocles’.  

"I expect the winning margin in Diamond Harbour to be more than any other constituency in the country,” Abhishek said on Thursday, listing the flyovers, roads, and other development works he initiated in the constituency during his two terms as a member of the Lok Sabha. With the crowd cheering incessantly for the “Commander of the Trinamool’s Sena”, he also reminded his voters how he had engaged the TMC’s local units to help people during the COVID-19 lockdown.

With Abhishek emerging as the heir apparent of Mamata, the tussle between the ‘Old Guards’ versus ‘Young Turks’ within the TMC has been escalating, forcing the party supremo to relieve all leaders in the higher echelons of the organisation of their offices in February 2022.

The move was initially perceived as the one intended to clip the wings of Abhishek, but he was later reinstated as the national general secretary of the party. The clamour within the TMC for the retirement of veterans continued to grow louder. Abhishek, himself, publicly stated that the politicians, like people in all other professions, should retire after reaching a certain age, leaving space for new leaders. His opinion was amplified by Bose and other TMC leaders close to him. Mamata, however, countered it, emphatically stating that the senior leaders must be respected.

Abhishek last year undertook a 3,500-km-long 'Trinamool er Nabajowar Yatra' crisscrossing the state for 60 days, to blunt the anti-incumbency wave triggered by the allegations of corruption against the party, which has been ruling the state since 2011.

Though he has been traveling across the state, campaigning for the party’s candidates contesting for the Lok Sabha seats, he has so far avoided campaigning, not only for Sudip Bandopadhyay in Kolkata Uttar but also for other veteran candidates, like Saugata Roy in Dum Dum and Kalyan Banerjee in Serampore. 

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