News Analysis India

Tag: Bengal Elections 2021

  • Bengal post-poll violence: CBI files three more FIRs, total 31 cases registered

    By PTI

    KOLKATA: The CBI, as part of its probe into cases of post-poll violence in West Bengal, has filed three new FIRs in two places, agency sources said on Tuesday.

    According to the sources, the cases were filed in Purba Medinipur’s Nandigram and Cooch Behar’s Sitalkuchi areas.

    As many as 31 cases have been filed so far by the agency.

    ALSO READ | Accused in West Bengal post-poll clashes shown absconding: CBI

    After the TMC stormed back to power, the BJP accused the ruling party workers of unleashing violence on its members, leaving several of them dead.

    The saffron camp also claimed that many homes of party activists have been destroyed, and women raped in various parts of the state.

    The Calcutta High Court, after taking cognisance of an NHRC report on post-poll violence, handed over the probe to the CBI.

  • BJP lost in West Bengal due to overconfidence of party leaders: Suvendu Adhikari

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: In his first public criticism after BJP’s defeat in the West Bengal assembly polls, Leader of Opposition in the State Assembly Suvendu Adhikari on Sunday said the BJP lost because of several leaders’ overconfidence that the party would get over 170 seats.

    At a party meeting in Chandipur area of Purba Medinipur district, Adhikari said this smugness and overconfidence led to lack of understanding of the emerging ground situation.

    “As we did well in the first two poll phases in these parts of assembly segments, many of our leaders became smug and overconfident.

    They started believing that the BJP will secure 170-180 seats in the elections, but they did not do the groundwork. This cost us dearly,” the TMC turncoat said.

    ALSO READ | Suvendu Adhikari attends hearing on Mukul Roy’s disqualification plea, says BJP may move court

    He said continuing work at the ground level was equally important as setting up targets, which was realistic but needed hard work.

    Reacting to Adhikari’s claims, Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said, “Suvendu has conveniently forgotten the slew of social welfare projects and a spree of development by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, and the mandate against BJP heavyweights’ sustained campaign against the CM and TMC.”

    “The BJP was living in a fool’s paradise as many of their leaders predicted that the saffron camp will cross 200 seats.

    Why he is finding fault with others? Didn’t Suvendu also boast repeatedly that his party will get 180 seats at least? Actually, they don’t know the pulse of Bengal, Trinamool does,” Ghosh, the state general secretary of the TMC, said.

  • Visva-Bharati announces lecture on reasons of BJP’s defeat in Bengal polls, cancels later

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: A virtual lecture on the reasons behind the BJP’s setback in the West Bengal assembly polls, to be organised by Visva-Bharati university next week, was cancelled hours after it was announced on Wednesday, varsity sources said.

    The lecture, “Why BJP failed to win West Bengal Assembly Elections” by Niti Aayog Joint Advisor Prof Sanjay Kumar, was part of the Visva-Bharati Lecture Series and Vice- Chancellor Prof Bidyut Chakrabarty was scheduled to preside over the programme.

    A notice inviting people to attend the lecture to be held at 4 pm on May 18 via Zoom platform was posted on the central university’s website earlier in the day.

    However, the authorities withdrew the notice, a copy of which is with PTI, from the website in the afternoon, sources said.

    A brief message – “Due to some unavoidable circumstances, this 35th lecture is treated to be as cancelled for the time being” – had been later added to the notice which is also not available on the website now.

    Visva-Bharati officials are not available for comment on the issue.

    The decision to hold a lecture on such a political issue by the university founded by Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore did not go down well with a section of the ashramites and the faculty.

    Veteran ashramite and Tagore family descendant Supriyo Tagore said, “Such blatantly political discourse should not be held in an institution like Visva Bharati associated with the ideals of Rabindranath.”

    Tagore founded Visva-Bharati in 1921 and it became a central university in 1951, 10 years after the bard’s death.

    A member of Left-leaning Visva Bharati University Faculty Association said, “The lecture on finding the reasons behind the BJP’s defeat by a Niti Aayog official would have compromised Visva-Bharati’s image as a liberal, independent institution.”

    The lecture showed the political leanings of the present management of the university, he claimed, saying that it is good that the programme was cancelled.

    In the West Bengal assembly election, the BJP bagged 77 seats while the Trinamool Congress secured a landslide victory winning 213 of the 292 constituencies that went to polls.

    Election was countermanded in two seats due to the death of candidates.

  • Bengal polls debacle: With mere 5.47 per cent vote share, Left stares at existential crisis

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: A graffiti on a central Kolkata wall said “Long live Marxism”.

    Someone with a wry sense of humour had cut out the word ‘live’ and scrawled ‘dead’ on top.

    The results of last week’s counting of votes cast in the crucial West Bengal elections seemed to bear this out.

    Not only had the combined Left parties drawn a blank in polls to the assembly which they had run with an overwhelming majority for 34 long years, their vote share had dwindled to a mere 5.47 per cent in 2021, down from 30.1 per cent in 2011 when they lost the elections to Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee’s juggernaut.

    In the clash of the titans where the TMC was in a straight fight with the BJP in most constituencies, the once all-powerful Left seems to have been squeezed into oblivion.

    Even in the 2016 assembly elections, the Left parties had managed to get 25.69 per cent of the votes polled.

    “We lost because other factors like anti-incumbency were overridden by people’s anxiety to halt the BJP from capturing Bengal,” admitted Nilotpal Basu, CPI(M) Politburo member and former Rajya Sabha MP.

    Analysts said that the TMC’s win was in part powered by a gain of at least five per cent of the popular votes which normally go to the Left, as electors decided to ignore issues like corruption to exercise their franchise against the BJP.

    “In 2019, when the BJP won 18 Lok Sabha seats and bagged about 40 per cent of the votes cast, the Left and the Congress had ceded grounds to the rightist party, this time the Left votes went to the TMC,” said Dipankar Bhattacharya, General Secretary of the CPI(ML)- Liberation party which came out with a ‘No Vote to BJP’ campaign.

    Bhattacharya, an alumnus of the Indian Statistical Institute and his team have been researching on the just- concluded elections at their office in Creek Row area.

    The sharp drop in votes polled has dismayed CPI(M) cadres, and the central leadership of the party will review the election results to analyse what went wrong and to chart out a future course of action.

    Even Jadavpur, long dubbed ‘Leningrad of the East’ which has elected a Left candidate in every election since 1967, except once, fell before the Trinamool onslaught.

    To rub in the humiliation, veteran CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty lost by a margin of nearly 40,000 votes to a little-known TMC debutante in a seat, where it was said that the Left “would win even if the party fielded a lamp post with the hammer and sickle sign on it”.

    “The Kolkata city voting patterns show that people decided to stop the BJP and they chose to gravitate towards the TMC it is a limited mandate from the Left-liberal- secular opinion against the BJP,” Basu said, adding “the ruling party should not consider this as their vote.

    As Leftist forces consolidate, it will regain this vote share”.

    However, independent analysts do not believe getting back vote shares will be a simple task for the Left parties led by the CPI(M).

    “The crisis the Left is facing is deep rooted. Its falling vote share is just an indicator of a deeper malaise,” said Rajat Roy, political analyst and member of the think tank Calcutta Research Group.

    The fall of the Left is underlined by the fact that just 17 years ago it was the third-largest party with 59 MPs of the 543-strong Lok Sabha, with 35 seats coming from West Bengal alone.

    Since then, its sway over the electorate has dwindled to a situation where it has no MPs from West Bengal in the Lok Sabha.

    CPI(M)’s vote share alone has fallen in recent years from 19.75 per cent in the 2016 assembly polls to 6.34 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when a whispering campaign “chup chap padma phoole chaap” (secretly vote for BJP) saw a section of its voters swung to the BJP as a reaction to TMCs attitude towards the Left.

    In 2021, the CPI(M) managed to garner just 4.73 per cent of votes polled as the pendulum shifted towards the TMC.

    “The once revolutionary party which rode to popularity on the back of peasants’ movements and trade union militancy has been living in a cocoon for long. Since the 1990s, instead of mass contact movements, it has depended on party apparatchiks like Laksman Seth of Haldia and Anil Basu of Hooghly to deliver votes. Their decline now defines the Left’s hold over voters,” Roy said.

    The CPI(M), which stormed into power in 1977 following a popular upsurge against then chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray’s brutal suppression of the Naxal movement, industrial stagnation and emergency excesses, had also failed to live up to people’s expectations with its inability to create jobs, encourage industry and by lowering public education and healthcare standards.

    However, insulated from the two major political upheavals that shook India in 1990s the Mandal agitation and the Ram Mandir stir and bereft of strong opposition, Bengal remained a unique Left citadel, even as the Communism crumbled in Eastern Europe and embraced capitalism in China.

    The rise of Mamata Banerjee’s strident street-smart politics in the late 1990s and 2000s, which used people’s movements against eviction of hawkers in Kolkata, agitations against land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram, severely challenged the Left.

    “The connect with ordinary people, which was their (Leftists) hallmark snapped. CPI(M) leaders were living in a world of doctrinaire, while the lower cadres were reaping the gains of office,” Roy explained.

    By 2011, Banerjee had breached the ‘Red fortress’ and by 2021, the Left was misreading its voters’ mind, Bhattacharya claimed.

    “The traditional Left completely misread the situation in this election. They should have seen the significance of the battle for Bengal. Here, we had a party backed by RSS, a ‘fascist’ organisation, out to capture Bengal. Yet they concocted slogans that equated the BJP and the TMC, and called them ‘two sides of the same coin’. This did not convince even their own people,” he said.

    The CPI(ML)-Liberation leader felt that class concerns where the “poor saw the BJP as a rich man’s party”, gender concerns raised by comments on “love Jihad and Romeo squads” and “issues of Bengali identity” united voters against “attempts to polarise them communally”.

    The Left’s electoral alliance with the newly-floated Indian Secular Front led by a conservative Islamic cleric, known for controversial comments, too did not go down well with Leftist liberals.

    “The tie-up with Abbas Siddique simply backfired on them,” said Bhattacharya.

    The Left, analysts believe, now has to reinvent itself and go back to mass contact movements to stay relevant.

    Cadres of Leftist students’ unions, who fanned out in districts of south Bengal to campaign for CPI(M)’s new faces such as JNU Students Union president Aishe Ghosh and party’s youth wing state president Minakshi Mukherjee, are expected to lead the mobilisation needed to bring back it into reckoning.

    “Our young candidates have got relatively good vote share. They are our hope,” Basu said.

    According to collated data based on Election Commission figures, the Left had registered its best-show in south-east Bengal where it received nearly nine per cent of the popular votes.

    This is also the region where most of the young faces were fielded.

    “Let us see what lessons the Left draws from its rout. We have to step up our role,” said Bhattacharya.

    While Roy added, “the key is mass connects, no party can survive without mass movements.”

  • AIMIM or ISF no alternative; Muslims resposed faith in TMC to stop BJP juggernaut: Politicos

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: Muslims in Bengal have largely exercised their franchise in favour of the TMC, putting to rest all speculations over their voting pattern, as results showed that the AIMIM and newly floated ISF have failed to curry favour with members of the community.

    Veteran TMC leader Siddiqullah Chowdhury stated that the minority community knew well that Banerjee was the only person who could stop BJP’s juggernaut in Bengal.

    Voters from the community were unsure of reposing faith in the Sanjukta Morcha — an alliance of the Left Front, Congress and peerzada Abbas Siddiqui’s Indian Secular Front (ISF) — as ideologies of the three parties varied, he said.

    “At least 95 per cent of all Muslims in Bengal voted for Mamata Banerjee.

    My brothers and sisters from the community would have never voted for a communal force.

    They have clearly realised that Mamata didi is the only one that can fight communalism in West Bengal,” he told PTI.

    Chowdhury also asserted that Muslims had seen through BJP’s ploy to create divisions on religious lines.

    “I had said during my campaigns that Muslims will definitely prove more trustworthy than others.

    They will remain faithful to Mamata Banerjee,” the 71-year-old leader, who bagged the Monteswar seat with 1,05,460 votes, said.

    Senior Congress leader Abdul Mannan, on his part, contended that scepticism of some party members over formation of a coalition with the ISF cost the Sanjukta Morcha dearly.

    “People could not bank on us as the coalition did not shape up as expected, owing to non-acceptance of the ISF by some of our leaders.

    And that, in a way, led to our downfall,” Mannan told PTI.

    AIMIM’s Asadullah Sheikh, however, reasoned that the Muslims, scared and threatened by the BJP, found no better option than the TMC as they could not have relied on new parties that joined the fray.

    “Our Muslim brothers and sisters were tormented by BJP men.

    They felt threatened as BJP leaders kept harping on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC).

    Apprehensive of an uncertain future, they could not rely on Sanjukta Morcha or us,” he pointed out.

    Sheikh also claimed that the TMC government did nothing to improve the living standards of the community over the past 10 years, but it still managed to pocket votes because “Muslims, more than anything else, wanted to stop the BJP from coming to power in Bengal”.

    “The voting pattern has been the same everywhere, be it Lalgola, Bhagawalgola, Berhampore, Malda, South 24 Parganas or Birbum or Uttar Dinajpur,” he explained.

    Political analyst Biswanath Chakraborty also felt that the community voted for the TMC to protect their identity.

    “It’s 100 per cent true that members of the minority community voted for the TMC in hordes.

    They feared losing their identities.

    The poll narrative around Citizenship Act and National Register of Citizens scared them,” Chakraborty told PTI.

    Interestingly, the Muslim representation in West Bengal assembly has dropped this time when compared to what it was in 2016, even as members of the community voted en masse for the Mamata Banerjee camp.

    The new assembly will be having 44 Muslim legislators – 43 of the TMC and one of the ISF — as against 59 during its last term.

    Apart from Chowdhury, some of the prominent Muslim legislators in the new Assembly will be TMC heavyweights Firhad Hakim, Javed Khan, Idris Ali and IPS-turned politician Humayun Kabir.

    The ISF had contested 26 seats this election, while the Asaduddin Owaisi-led party fielded candidates in seven constituencies.

  • Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar summons chief secretary over post-poll violence

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: Stating that the state Home Secretary failed to apprise him of law and order situation regarding post-poll violence, West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Saturday asked the Chief Secretary to see him by evening.

    Dhankhar tweeted that the home secretary did not forward reports of the state’s director-general of police (DGP) and commissioner of Kolkata police to him in this regard.

    “Chief Secretary @MamataOfficial has been called upon to see me today before 7 PM as ACS Home @HomeBengal failed to impart status report on law and order regarding post-poll violence,” the governor said in his tweet.

    While State faces worst post election violence- people being made to pay with their lives and freedom only for having exercised right to vote in democracy, Chief Secretary ⁦@MamataOfficial⁩ comes up with alibi for not briefing Governor. Directed him to comply by 7 PM today. pic.twitter.com/fDMEGsnvkO
    — Governor West Bengal Jagdeep Dhankhar (@jdhankhar1) May 8, 2021

    “Such drifting of governance @MamataOfficial from constitutional prescriptions is unfortunate and cannot be overlooked.

    “While the state passes through most severe post-poll violence, there is just no input to the constitutional head. This is least expected,” Dhankhar wrote.

    The West Bengal has been marred with large scale violence after completion of bitterly fought state elections.

    The chief minister has said that 16 persons of different political parties have lost their lives in clashes after the end of the polls.

    A four-member team of the Union Home Ministry, tasked with looking into reasons for the post-poll violence in Bengal, had met Dhankhar at Raj Bhawan the previous day.

  • Homemaker stands out amid BJP drubbing in Bengal, readies for MLA stint

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: The BJP might have fallen flat on its ambition to rule Bengal, but the party found the most unlikely winner in a 30-year-old homemaker of humble means who scripted a stunning victory, trouncing her nearest TMC rival by a margin of over 4,000 votes.

    A mother of three, newly elected Saltora MLA, Chandana Bauri, who followed in her husband’s footsteps and joined the saffron camp around five years ago, had never imagined she would ever be called upon to represent her constituency.

    As a party worker, she worked every day, cycling her way to various parts of the constituency from her home in Saltora, Bankura district, trying to “strengthen the organisation and ensuring that people in need get requisite help”.

    “I always thought contesting an election involved a lot of money, and that it wasn’t really a possibility, given the fact that we are not well-off.”

    “My husband is a mason, and the little that we save goes into funding my children’s education and meeting our daily expenses. However, when the local BJP leadership wanted to field me from Saltora, I realised that my work would speak for me,” Bauri said.

    Asked what prompted her to take the plunge into electoral politics, the newly elected MLA said “atrocities perpetrated by TMC activists” was a major reason behind her decision to contest the elections.

    “During the last panchayat elections, many from the BJP were not given a chance to file nomination, the legislator said.

    She alleged that party men and women were physically stopped from making an attempt to join the electoral fray and said, “I just wanted to do something to put an end to this anarchy.”

    She also stressed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s welfare initiatives, such as measures taken under Swachh Bharat Mission, were other reasons for her joining the saffron camp.

    Born in a humble family in Barjora area of Bankura, Bauri lost her father just two days before her Class 10 board exams began.

    Her mother did odd jobs to feed the family.

    “My mother weathered many a storm, washed dishes, sold cow dung cakes to eke out a living. I have four more siblings, and she made sure none of us went to bed hungry. She happens to be my inspiration. Women are capable of doing great things. I have learnt that from my mother and grandmother,” she said.

    Bauri, who still lives in a one-room mud hut, also thanked her husband and in-laws for being supportive.

    “I would wake up early, cook food and leave for mandal committee work. My in-laws and relatives, who live nearby, took care of my household when I was away. There are so many people who have helped me in my journey and I cant be grateful enough to them,” she told PTI.

    The BJP MLA said she wanted her children two daughters and a son — to pursue higher education and find jobs that would not just benefit them but touch other people’s lives, too.

    Talking about her plans to develop Saltora, she pointed out that the place still lacks proper roads.

    “I will definitely work towards developing the infrastructure in Saltora. Proper roads and clean drinking water top my list of priorities,” the BJP MLA said.

  • After Tathagata Roy lashing out at BJP over Bengal defeat, party veteran summoned to Delhi

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: BJP leader Tathagata Roy on Thursday said his party’s top brass has called him to Delhi at the earliest, a day after he criticised some of the measures taken by the saffron camp’s decision-makers ahead of the assembly elections.

    The BJP pocketed just 77 seats in the just-concluded Bengal polls, with the TMC having bagged 213 constituencies.

    The saffron party had set a target of winning over 200 seats.

    Taking to Twitter, the former governor of two northeastern states — Tripura and Meghalaya — said, “I have been asked by the party’s topmost leadership to come to Delhi ASAP. This is for general information.”

    Roy, during his interaction with reporters on Wednesday, had claimed that “unwanted elements” from the TMC was inducted into the BJP ahead of the assembly polls, and leaders having no idea or understanding of Bengali culture and heritage were made to helm the election campaign in the state.

    On the migroblogging site, he also wrote, “In the depths of my frustration I think of my icons Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay. How they had suffered and compared to that what is my suffering! Such thoughts, such suffering will not go in vain. Never!”

    In a no-holds-barred diatribe aimed at state BJP minders and the Bengal unit chief, he further tweeted, “Kailash-Dilip-Shiv-Arvind (KDSA) foursome have dragged the names of our respected Prime Minister and Home Minister through mud and have sullied the name of the biggest political party in the world. Sitting atop Agarwal Bhavan of Hastings (W Bengal BJP’s election headquarters).”

    On Tuesday, Roy, known for his controversial remarks and tweets, had said that three new female entrants in the BJP from the tinsel town, who got defeated by big margins, are “politically stupid”, raising several eyebrows.

    “What great qualities were these women possessed of? Kailash Vijayvargiya, Dilip Ghosh & Co must answer (sic),” he had tweeted.

    Reacting strongly to Roy’s jibe at his industry colleagues, Kanchan Mallick, an actor who fought on a TMC ticket and won the Uttarpara seat, “It is insulting for them even though they belong to my rival party,” he said.

  • ‘Not even 24 hours since I took oath as CM, central teams have started arriving’: Mamata lashes out at BJP

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said 16 people have lost their lives in post-poll violence in the state, and announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh each for their families.

    Banerjee, during a press meet here, also said that her government will provide jobs of home guard to one family member each of all five persons killed in CAPF firing in Cooch Behar’s Sitalkuchi area last month.

    She further said that a CID team has initiated a probe into the incident of firing in Cooch Behar that took place when the voting exercise was underway for the fourth phase of assembly elections, on April 10.

    “At least 16 persons – mostly from the BJP and the TMC and one of the Samyukta Morcha — died in post-poll violence. We will pay a compensation of Rs 2 lakh to their family members. Our government will also provide jobs of home guard to the next of kin of Sitalkuchi victims,” she said.

    Taking a swipe at the BJP, the CM said that the saffron party was yet to come to terms with people’s mandate.

    She accused central leaders of inciting violence in the state.

    “Not even 24 hours have passed since I was sworn-in as the CM, and letters, a central team have started arriving. This is because the BJP has not yet reconciled to the mandate of common people. I will request the saffron party leaders to accept the mandate,” she told reporters.

    “Please allow us to focus on the COVID situation. We do not want to engage in any squabble,” she added.

    A four-member fact-finding team of the Union Home Ministry, tasked with looking into reasons for the post-poll violence in West Bengal, arrived in the state on Thursday.

    Led by an additional secretary of the ministry, the team visited the state secretariat and held a meeting with the home secretary and DGP, sources said.

    The team, which will also assess the ground situation in the state, is likely to visit several areas in the city as well as South 24 Parganas, Godkhali, Sunderbans and Jaggadal, they said.

    The ministry had on Wednesday sent a terse reminder to the West Bengal government to submit a detailed report on the post-poll violence and to take necessary measures to stop such incidents “without any loss of time”.

    It has also asked West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar to give a report on the law and order situation in the state, particularly the violence that took place following the election results on May 2.

    Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said that 16 people have lost their lives in post-poll violence in the state.

    The BJP has alleged that TMC-backed goons have killed a number of its workers, attacked women members, vandalised houses and looted shops.

    Rejecting the charges, Banerjee had Wednesday said violence and clashes were taking place in those areas where BJP candidates emerged victorious in the assembly polls.

    Meanwhile, Trinamool Congress MLA Firhad Hakim hit out at the Centre for sending teams instead of COVID-19 vaccines.

    “They should send vaccines first, that’s the responsibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. We are grieved that some people have died, and action will be taken against the culprits.”

    “But, what will happen to the inoculation process which is stalled because of the vaccine crisis?” Hakim said.

  • Bengal’s champion sports trio, Dinda, Tiwary, Bose hope to recreate on-field magic in politics

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: Hitting sixes, bowling unbeatable bouncers or scoring hattricks have been their forte, but now Bengal’s iconic sportsmen – Manoj Tiwary, Ashok Dinda and Bidesh Bose- hope to replicate their magic in the game of politics.

    Having won their debut electoral battles, the trio are all excited about “making a difference” in their new innings.

    Mohun Bagan’s legendary leftwinger Bidesh Bose and former India batsman Manoj Tiwary won in Uluberia East and Shibpur respectively for the ruling Trinamool Congress that swept the West Bengal Assembly elections winning 213 of the 292 seats.

    Former tearaway Bengal pacer Dinda, who played under Tiwary for several years, on the other hand won it for BJP which garnered 77 seats in the West Bengal Assembly Polls.

    There was a fourth former sportsperson, BJP’s Kalyan Chaubey, who too was in the poll fray.

    However, the former India goalkeeper lost to TMC heavywieght Sadhan Pande, three years after he had lost the Lok Sabha election fight to Mahua Mitra in his political debut at Krishnanagar.

    Dinda, who contested from Moyna in Tamluk of East Medinipur district defeated TMC’s two-time sitting MLA Sangram Kumar Dolai by a thin margin of 1260 votes.

    “You can call it like getting five wickets in a debut match,” Dinda, who is Bengals second most successful bowler after Utpal Chatterjee, with 420 first-class wickets in just 116 fixtures, told PTI.

    Pitted against the TMC heavyweight Dolai, who had won the previous 2016 Assembly Polls by more than 12,000 votes, his “debut match” was not an easy task.

    “Like in sports, it was ‘sheer hardwork’ that clinched it for me,” the 37-year-old, who retired from all forms of cricket earlier this year, said.

    “Everyday I would go to one village after another and talk to people, understand their problems and give them my promise to make a difference for them,” he said.

    “They would say they had hardly seen the ruling MLA visit them for even five minutes in his five-year tenure.”

    “So what if my party has not won. The work will not stop. Maybe I won’t be in power but I can take the people’s voice to the Assembly and work for them,” Dinda said.

    Lack of a proper medical facility in Moyna is Dinda’s main concern.

    “The two government hospitals here are in a bad shape, often people die on way to Kolkata. My priority is to create a state-of-art medical facility here.”

    A former India player and one of the finest batsmen to have emerged from Bengal in the post-Sourav Ganguly era, Tiwary is committed to work 24×7 for people of Shibpur.

    “Politics is not an easy place for a newcomer from a different sphere. I had campaigned door-to-door in Shibpur locality. They were convinced by my honest intentions. I want to be a politician who will be available for his people 24×7,” Tiwary, 35, said.

    “As of now, tackling the COVID-19 crisis will be our first priority. Then we will go step-by-step.”

    “So is it curtains for his cricketing career? “Not yet. I will maintain my fitness. There is going to be no Ranji matches for a year. I will wait and see how it goes. But I don’t rule out playing a few more games for Bengal.”

    For the star footballer of the 1970s, Bidesh Bose, it is about listening to his “head coach” Mamata Banerjee’s instructions in scoring a winning goal as he defeated BJP’s Pratyush Mondal and Abbasuddin Khan of Indian Secular Front.

    In Uluberia Purba where Muslims comprise nearly 34 per cent of the electorate and where BJP had launched a high pitched campaign, Bose faced a stiff challenge from both Khan and Mondal but the rookie politician stayed grounded.

    “When Didi first had offered me this seat in March, I didn’t know how to go about it, how do I live up to her reputation.”

    “Then when I personally went there, met the people and heard their problems, I realised that this is altogether a different pitch. It’s a completely different Maidan. But it was just like another game,” Bose said.

    “I’m not a man of politics so I will play the game as my coach and assistant coach instruct. We have got good roads but what’s missing is good sanitation and drinking water. There’s a bit of conflict with this being a Panchayat area. This will be my main priority at this moment,” he concluded.