Kolkata, March 1 – The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) aims to mount a strong challenge to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in her Assembly constituency, Bhabanipur, in the upcoming Assembly elections.
The leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly and veteran BJP leader, Suvendu Adhikari, has established a "war room" in the Bhabanipur constituency, BJP sources said on Sunday.
This "war room" is located 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 is worth noting that the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency consists of eight wards of the KMC: 63, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77, and 82.
Since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP has consistently received significant votes in six wards of the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency.
In several cases, the BJP has even maintained a substantial lead, leaving the ruling Trinamool Congress behind in wards 63, 70, 71, 72, and 74.
Based on these statistics, Opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari intends to defeat Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the upcoming state Assembly elections. This is why the Opposition leader is participating in various BJP programmes in the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency at least once a week.
In the 2021 state Assembly elections, the Chief Minister contested from Nandigram in East Midnapore district, which is the Assembly constituency of Suvendu Adhikari.
However, after losing to Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram, Mamata Banerjee later fulfilled the constitutional requirement to become the Chief Minister by winning the Bhabanipur Assembly by-election.
The BJP leadership says that the Chief Minister will contest the upcoming Assembly elections from Bhabanipur. Therefore, the BJP leadership has instructed Opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari to make preparations so that Mamata Banerjee can face a tough contest this time.
A West Bengal BJP source said that the strategy to fight against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will be implemented from the party's war room office in ward number-70.
Since the BJP has the highest number of votes in this ward, it has been decided to set up an office in this ward to fight against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
According to a BJP leader, the Trinamool Congress has repeatedly won the Bhabanipur seat based on the margin of votes obtained only in one ward.
Since ward number-77 of Bhabanipur is dominated by minorities, the Trinamool Congress received a massive number of votes from this ward.
Surprisingly, according to statistics, the names of approximately 47,000 voters were deleted in the case of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Assembly constituency, while the same figure in the case of the constituency of Suvendu Adhikari stood at approximately 11,000.
As per the data available from the office of the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), in the case of the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency in Kolkata, where the legislator is the Chief Minister, the total number of deleted names in the final voters' list stands at 47,111.
In the case of Bhabanipur, the number of voters whose documents are currently under judicial adjudication stands at 14,154, which means that more names from that constituency are likely to be deleted at the end of the judicial adjudication process.
Sources in the BJP said that the maximum number of names to have been deleted from the final voter list is from ward number-77. As a result, the BJP hopes to cut short the Trinamool Congress' votes in Bhabanipur and gain an upper hand in the upcoming state Assembly polls.