Nandigram, Haldia, Panskura East and Tamluk are among the 25 constituencies in West Bengal that will go to the polls on Thursday. These seats are especially important because they were all affected by the Nandigram agitation, after a land acquisition for a proposed petrochemical special economic zone that made the Left Front government so unpopular that it was unable to recover ground. In fact, when panchayat elections took place some years ago, the Left could not find people willing to contest elections on its banner and had to back independents, so comprehensively unpopular were they in this area.
In the 2006 Assembly elections, the Left Front had won in 13 of the 16 seats in Purba Medinipur but in the 2009 general election, it lost in both the parliamentary constituencies in the district.
The district used to be one of the CPI-M's strongholds until early 2007, till the Nandigram stand-off between the administration and the locals, who refused to give up their land for the project.
So, the question is what are voters going to say to them now? The issue in this round is not whether the Trinamool Congress will win but whether the
Left-Congress alliance is able to recover ground.
Campaigning spotlight shifts from Bengal to Kerala, TN
The campaigning spotlight will shift from West Bengal to Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Both states will go the polls in a one-day election on May 16. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address five election rallies in Kerala, where the Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to open its account. Modi will begin his election campaign in the state by addressing a rally at Palakkad on Friday. The PM will address another rally in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday. Three other rallies have been planned at Kasaragod, Alapuzha and Ernakulam, either on May 11 or May 12.
The PM will also speak at rallies in Tamil Nadu. He will speak to voters in public meetings on Friday and Sunday. BJP chief Amit Shah will be speaking at election meetings in different places. Union ministers Nirmala Seetharaman, Smriti Irani, Ravishankar Prasad, Piyush Goyal and Prakash Javadekar are among 20 who will campaign for National Democratic Alliance candidates in the coming days. As Parliament will still be in session, little wonder that everyone is in favour of curtailing the remaining part of the session.
