 "Trinamool's West Bengal list, Meghalaya plan dent INDIA bloc's blueprint")
In the first sign that the Opposition INDIA bloc had failed to ensure one-on-one contests against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Sunday announced its list of 42 candidates for the Lok Sabha (LS) polls in West Bengal, including two seats that the Congress won in 2019. It also declared its intention to contest in Meghalaya, where the Congress announced its candidates on Friday, and Assam.
TMC fielded fewer women than in 2019, replacing its sitting Member of Parliament (MP) and Bengali film actor Nusrat Jahan from Basirhat, where Sandeshkhali is situated, with former MP Haji Nurul Islam, who represented the seat from 2009 to 14. It dropped seven sitting MPs, including Jahan, Jadavpur MP and another Bengali film star, Mimi Chakraborty, and the father-son duo of Sisir and Dibyendu Adhikari.
Actor Saayoni Ghosh, who has headed the TMC’s youth wing since 2021, will contest the Jadavpur LS seat.
TMC renominated 15 of its sitting MPs. Additionally, the party has fielded Shatrughan Sinha, who won the Asansol LS by-poll on the TMC ticket. TMC lost Asansol in 2019. It has fielded nine legislators, including two ministers.
At her party’s public meeting on Sunday afternoon at Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground, TMC Chairperson Mamata Banerjee “saluted” Arun Goel, who quit last week as the country’s Election Commissioner. She said Geol resisted the diktats against Bengal and alleged an attempt to “rig” the LS polls.
Mamata paraded 42 of her party’s Bengal candidates, including cricketer Yusuf Pathan. The party is fielding him from Baharampur, the seat of Congress’ LS leader, strident Mamata-baiter Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. From Maldaha Dakshin, which Congress’ Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury has represented in the last four LS, TMC fielded a relatively unknown research scholar from Oxford, Shahnawaz Ali Raihan.
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In 2019, Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury won by a thin margin of 8,222 votes against the BJP’s Sreerupa Mitra Chaudhury, who was later elected Member of Legislative Assembly from English Bazar, with TMC’s Moazzem Hossain securing a significant 27.45 per cent vote share in a three-cornered contest. The BJP has again fielded Sreerupa from the seat. According to sources, TMC fielding ‘outsiders’ in Baharampur and Maldaha Dakshin could help the sitting Congress MPs.
TMC fielded former Indian Police Service officer Prasun Banerjee from Maldaha Uttar, a seat that TMC’s Mausam Noor lost in 2019 to the BJP’s Khagen Murmu with her cousin Isha Khan Choudhury at no. 3.
TMC fielded former cricketer Kirti Azad from the Bardhaman-Durgapur seat, which the party lost in 2019. Mohua Moitra will contest her sitting Krishnanagar seat, while actor and state legislator June Malia will contest from Medinipur, which the TMC lost in 2019.
TMC is fielding fewer women than five years ago. In the list announced Sunday, 12, or nearly 29 per cent, of its 42 candidates are women. In 2019, it dropped its sitting male MPs to field as many as 17 women, or almost 41 per cent, with eight of them winning. Of the nine who had lost, the TMC last month sent Mausam Noor and Mamata Thakur to the Rajya Sabha.
Of the dozen women contesting on the TMC ticket is Sujata Mondal Khan from Bishnupur, against her ex-husband and sitting BJP MP Saumitra Khan.
In 2019, the BJP gave the TMC a scare in West Bengal, winning 18 seats to the TMC’s 22. The BJP secured a significant 40.64 per cent vote share, a mere 3 per cent less than the TMC’s 43.69 per cent. However, it couldn't repeat its performance in the 2021 Assembly polls, with the TMC increasing the gap in their respective vote shares to 10 per cent by securing 48.02 per cent against the BJP’s 37.97 per cent.
The BJP announced a list of 20 candidates from Bengal on March 4, with its proposed Asansol candidate, Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh, later expressing his unavailability to contest after outrage over his songs “denigrating Bengali women”.
Mamata said the TMC will contest a seat in Uttar Pradesh, for which she had spoken with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, and also in Meghalaya.
The Congress has fielded its sitting Shillong MP Vincent Pala and announced its candidate from Tura.
In 2019, Congress candidate Mukul Sangma was the runner-up in Tura, losing to the National People’s Party’s Agatha Sangma. Mukul Sangma joined the TMC in 2021, was the party’s chief ministerial candidate for the 2023 Meghalaya Assembly polls and addressed Sunday’s rally in Kolkata.
The TMC has framed the forthcoming LS battle as one between bohiragoto zamindar (the feudal lords who are outsiders), who are unaware of Bengal’s culture versus bhoomiputra (sons of the soil), and as Mamata’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee put it, a “Modi versus Didi” battle.
In the context of the Sandeshkhali controversy, she flagged the BJP’s failure to protect the dignity of women in Manipur. She said her party would oppose the National Register of Citizens.