Kolkata, April 24
With 48 hours left for the Assembly elections to begin in Kolkata and the adjoining two 24 Parganas districts, which will decide the future governance of West Bengal, both the ruling Left Front and the Opposition parties, have launched massive campaign in favour of their respective candidates.
While the Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, who has replaced Mr Jyoti Basu this time as the Left Front’s main star-campaigner , has already completed his campaign tours in most of the districts and is now concentrating on his own constituency at Jadavpore. The Trinamool supremo, Ms Mamata Banerjee, has been finding it difficult to cover many of the districts due to lack of transport facilities. Ms Banerjee had undertaken an hurricane election tour in two north Bengal districts and four other districts in south Bengal in a helicopter in the past week.
But most of the Congress leaders and the CPM campaigners have been using their personal vehicles. The Defence Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, and the Union Information Minister, Mr Priya Dasmunshi, who are the main party campaigners have been provided VIP cars from the government pool on the condition of making payment from their own pocket. Mr Mukherjee also used the Defence Department helicopter during an election tour with the AICC President, Ms Sonia Gandhi.
So far in two phases of elections held on April 17 and 22, the polling was held in 111 of the 294 constituencies in seven districts in south Bengal. On April 27, the elections will be held in Kolkata and the North 24 parganas and the South 24 parganas, when the fate of Mr Bhattacharjee and several other candidates will be decided.
The BJP leaders, Mr L.K.Advani, Mr Rajnath Singh and Mr Arun Jaitley have already addressed several election meetings in the districts and campaigned in favour of the NDA candidates.
Today, the Bihar Chief Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar, addressed three meetings in the Burra Bazaar area in support of the NDA candidates where both the BJP and the TMC leaders shared the same dais with Mr Kumar. The Bihar Chief Minister appealed to the people to vote for the NDA and get a new government in Bengal. Ms Mamata Banerjee has been projected as the Chief Ministerial candidate by the NDA.
The Railway Minister, Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav, who was also in the city yesterday to address a few meetings in favour of the Left Front -supported RJD candidates, was confident of the CPM coming to power for the seventh time. The Congress MP from Mumbai, Ms Priya Dutt, the daughter of late Sunil Dutt, today appealed to people to replace the present government by installing a UPA government in the state.
