The fate of political heavyweights in West Bengal, including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and legislators purportedly seen in the Narada sting operation tapes, will be decided in the crucial fifth phase polls on Saturday.
Fifty-three constituencies across three districts of the State — 30 seats in South 24 Parganas, five in South Kolkata and 18 in Hooghly — will go to polls today.
Over 1.2 crore voters will decide the fate of 349 candidates including Ministers Manish Gupta, Subrata Mukherjee, Firhad (Bobby) Hakim, Partha Chatterjee, Becharam Manna, Rachpal Singh, Rabindranath Bhattacharya, Aroop Biswas and Javed Ahmed Khan.
Other political heavyweights include senior leaders like Sovandeb Chattopadhyay of TMC, Abdur Rezzak Mollah (who joined TMC after being expelled from CPM) Congress-Left’s Abdul Mannan, Deepa Dasmunshi and Sujon Chakraborty.
The focus constituencies include Singur, the epicentre’s of Mamata’s parivatan (change) call; and Bhabanipur, where the CM will take on the Congress’ Dasmunsi and the BJP’s Chandra Kumar Bose. In the 2011 Assembly elections, the TMC won 25 seats in South 24 Parganas.
There are problems for the ruling party in some seats. Factional feud is a problem in Bhangar, which the Left had managed to win even in 2011.
King-maker And, if the 2014 Lok Sabha numbers are an indication, the Left-Congress is well placed in at least 10 seats which the TMC had won.
Ironically, the BJP might emerge as a king-maker in many seats.
A good run by the party will mean a vote division between the BJP and the Left-Congress, which might actually help the Trinamool Congress.