Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday directed Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers in her Assembly constituency, south Kolkata’s Bhowanipore, to keep a close watch on the strong rooms where electronic voting machines (EVMs) are kept after polling, party leaders present at the closed-door meeting said.
Seeking re-election for a fourth term, Banerjee reportedly cautioned the TMC workers by citing her defeat in the 2021 assembly polls in East Midnapore district’s Nandigram against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA and her former cabinet colleague Suvendu Adhikari.
After the debacle—which forced her to continue in office by winning a by-election in Bhowanipore—Banerjee challenged the Nandigram verdict, alleging that the BJP disconnected power lines at the end of polling to swap EVM machines.
Adhikari is contesting against her in both Bhowanipore and Nandigram in this year’s two-phase polls.
“Didi (Banerjee) said they (BJP) may engineer another load shedding (power cut),” a TMC leader said, requesting anonymity.
The media was not allowed inside the auditorium where the chief minister and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee instructed workers to reach out to voters in each of the eight civic wards of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) that constitute Bhowanipore.
The TMC trailed the BJP in four of these wards in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, analysis of booth-level results later showed.
TMC leaders said Mamata Banerjee criticised party councillors from those four wards for not doing enough work for residents, particularly in areas where non-Bengali-speaking people constitute a large share of the population.
“She asked party leaders and workers to act as soon as the supplementary voters’ list is announced on Monday by the Election Commission (EC). She said the TMC will provide legal assistance to voters whose names do not appear in the list so that they can move the tribunals set up for the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR),” a second TMC leader said.
Around 47,000 names were deleted from the Bhowanipore voters’ list during the first phase of the SIR. These include dead and absentee voters.
“Banerjee asked our workers to maintain their cool and not fall for provocations. She said they must report to the party if they detect outsiders entering Bhowanipore,” the leader said.
Adhikari launched his campaign on Thursday. “I talked to local voters and read their minds. Mamata Banerjee poses no challenge. I will defeat her by at least 25,000 votes. I will defeat her for the second time,” Adhikari said, reminding the crowd that he defeated her by 1,956 votes in 2021.
At Sunday’s meeting, Abhishek Banerjee said the TMC has to win the seat by at least 60,000 votes.
The Bhowanipore constituency is part of the Kolkata South Lok Sabha seat held by the TMC.
Banerjee, who is scheduled to launch the TMC’s campaign in north Bengal on Monday, is yet to hit the streets in Bhowanipore.
