Reportedly the West bengal assembly election is over a year away, but it promises to be a keenly-fought battle between a doughty trinamool congress seeking to defend its fortress and a resurgent bharatiya janata party, which has tasted some success in the state during the lok sabha election. home minister amit shah set the ball rolling for his party with a rally in kolkata on sunday, where he launched the campaign of Aar Noi Annay (no more injustice). During the rally, Shah made repeated references to the citizenship amendment act (CAA), accusing TMC supremo mamata banerjee of hurting the interests of refugees, and of caring only for infiltrators.
However this call for shooting "traitors" had been made only recently ahead of the delhi election, and had led to Union minister anurag thakur being banned from the campaign for three days. Perhaps the reappearance of the slogan is a sign of things to come it indicates that the West bengal election campaign is likely to be a highly vitriolic and divisive one. The state's sordid history of election-related violence only adds to the apprehensions in this regard.
Moreover TMC would be enthused by the recent trend of voters snubbing the bjp in state level contests despite reposing faith in it for the lok sabha election. Crucially, the lack of a credible face haunts the saffron party in bengal, much like in Delhi. Perhaps Banerjee on monday launched ''Banglar Gorbo Mamata'' (Bengal's pride Mamata), a public outreach campaign to connect with more than 2.5 crore people and get the party battle-ready. Like the "Didi Ke Bolo" (tell Didi) campaign, the new programme is also a brainchild of poll strategist prashant kishor and his team- I-PAC.
