From campaigning on a ship in the Hooghly river to a sit-in in opposition to atrocities on ladies. From serving to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates similar to Swapan Dasgupta canvass in Hooghly district to frying aloo chop with unemployed children to protest in opposition to lack of industries. Locket Chatterjee, 46, has an extended to-do checklist. This election season, she is working tirelessly to strengthen her place because the BJP’s girl face in West Bengal.
A former actress in the Bengali cinema trade, Chatterjee shifted to the BJP from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in 2015. Four years later, she pulled a shock by profitable the Hooghly Lok Sabha constituency for the BJP for the primary time, defeating TMC parliamentarian Ratna De, who had held the seat for a decade.
In the 2021 meeting elections, Chatterjee has been fielded from Hooghly’s Chunchura constituency. But she is placing her efforts throughout all 18 seats in the district that go to polls in the third and fourth rounds of the eight-phase elections; the world is taken into account a TMC stronghold.
“In all 18 seats of Hooghly, we will sweep. The TMC will not win even one seat here,” Chatterjee informed News18 in an interview in Chunchura on Friday. She launched a pointy criticism of chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s pitch that “Bengal wants its own daughter”, asking if she was the one daughter of the state. “Despite being a woman chief minister, Banerjee has done nothing for women’s safety. Bengal is foremost in torture and trafficking of women. Banerjee points to other states, but she should look at her own state first. Bengal’s women made her the CM in 2011 and 2016 because they wanted parivartan (change). They thought it would be the best for them if there was a woman chief minister. But in 2021, one can see, no woman in West Bengal is safe,” Chatterjee stated.
‘A fight to the finish’
Chatterjee stated ladies’s security was the largest situation. “The women of Bengal have been tortured the most under Mamata’s government. Now, they will come out and answer through EVMs (electronic voting machines). Women in Nandigram have yesterday (April 1) ensured that Mamata will lose from there,” Chatterjee informed News18, referring to the high-profile seat the place the CM is contesting in opposition to her lieutenant-turned-rival Suvendu Adhikari.“There is Maa Durga, there is Maa Kali in every house. Mamata says she is a lioness, but all our women are lionesses,” Chatterjee stated.
Apart from Chatterjee, the BJP has fielded three different MPs — Swapan Dasgupta, Babul Supriyo and Nisith Pramanik — in the meeting polls. The transfer has triggered hypothesis that they could possibly be thought-about for the CM’s put up if the BJP wins. “The party gave me direction to contest (an assembly seat)…and the party has a strategy. This is a fight to the finish to remove the Mamata government…hence, we all are fighting it together. We are not fighting the election in West Bengal for the chief minister’s chair but (we are fighting it) against corruption. We are a big party and we will decide (on CM) after the win on May 2,” Chatterjee stated when requested if she was a CM possible.
TMC STRONGHOLD
The TMC gained 16 of the 18 seats in Hooghly district in the 2016 meeting elections. In the 2019 nationwide elections, the BJP received leads in eight of those 18 meeting segments, whereas Chatterjee gained the Hooghly Lok Sabha constituency. The BJP is now trying to higher its efficiency. In Chunchura, Chatterjee is up in opposition to Asit Majumdar, the TMC legislator who has retained the seat over the previous decade.
One of the main guarantees of the BJP for Hooghly is to make an enormous ghat on the banks of the Hooghly river — like these in Varanasi — and have every day aarti there.
In the largest ghat in Hooghly — Mayur Pankhi Ghat, which has modest services — a gaggle of children gathered for a morning dip. They stated a grander ghat could be good but what they really wanted was employment. “That is why majority of the youngsters are with the BJP as there is some hope,” an under-graduate pupil and a first-time voter, Raja Rajvansi, stated.
However, many aged folks in Chunchura appeared to be rooting for the TMC and praising what Banerjee had completed for the district. “We want communal harmony and peace above all. The BJP would disturb everything here,” a retired authorities servant, Manindur Kumar Saha, stated.
Candidates of the Indian Secular Front (ISF)-Left-Congress alliance, nonetheless, might spoil the get together for the TMC in seats in Hooghly which have the next Muslim inhabitants — similar to Haripal (30%), Khanakul (28%), Champdani (27%), Saptagram (24%) and Jangipara (22%). The final seat in this checklist is the bottom of the ISF’s Abbas Siddiqui, a cleric who’s working an aggressive marketing campaign in opposition to the TMC.
