Kolkata, March 3: With the crucial state elections in West Bengal on the horizon and aiming to provide a strong challenge to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in her constituency of Bhabanipur in South Kolkata, Suvendu Adhikari, the Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, organized a mass interaction there on Tuesday, coinciding with the Dol Yatra festival.
Adhikari celebrated the festival in Bhabanipur with monks and voters from the constituency.
The participation of the LoP in the Dol Yatra festival in Bhabanipur was met with enthusiasm from both local residents and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers, who were present in large numbers.
Adhikari is a legislator from the Nandigram Assembly constituency in East Midnapore district. He was elected from that constituency in 2021, defeating Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee by a margin of just under 2,000 votes.
Later, Mamata Banerjee won the by-elections from Bhabanipur and retained her position as the Chief Minister of West Bengal for the third consecutive term.
While interacting with the local people of Bhabanipur in the morning, the LoP also cautioned against "pseudo-secularism" and "atheism," and called for "greater Hindu unity" in the upcoming Assembly elections.
To provide a strong challenge to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Bhabanipur this time, the BJP has set up a "war room" in that constituency, and the LoP is personally overseeing the activities.
This "war room" has been set up on the ground floor of a house at 8/1B Chakraberia Road (South) in Ward No. 70 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) area.
It may be noted that the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency was formed with eight wards of KMC -- 63, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77 and 82.
Since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP has been consistently receiving decent votes in six wards of the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency.
Political observers feel that Adhikari has taken a tactical move by focusing on Bhabanipur this time to limit the movement of the Chief Minister within that constituency during the campaign phase, leaving little room for her to campaign across the state.
