This story is from April 3, 2019

Mamata hopes to steal Modi’s thunder with Cooch Behar meet

Mamata hopes to steal Modi’s thunder with Cooch Behar meet
Kolkata: Narendra Modi and Mamata Banerjee have their own priorities in the battle for Bengal. While PM Modi will be drumming up support for his party in Siliguri and Kolkata on Wednesday, chief minister Mamata Banerjee will be addressing a gathering at Cooch Behar’s Dinhata, 170km from Siliguri, in between Modi’s meetings on Wednesday so that she can tear into his narrative on the instant.

In fact, she changed her initial plans and brought forward the Cooch Behar meeting by a day from April 4.
Banerjee’s choosing Dinhata as the meeting venue seems not without reason. Ev-en as Trinamool has the highest number of uncontested seats in gram panchayats and panchayat samitis in no-rth Bengal from Cooch Beh-ar, party organisers are uneasy about this Lok Sabha seat.
One reason could be that youth Trinamool leader Nisith Pramanik was one of the architects of this uncontested win in the 2018 rural polls in the district. He is the BJP candidate now. The other reason is perhaps that Pramanik may challenge the Trinamool vote machine in Cooch Behar, particularly in Dinhata that witnessed the worst clashes between Trinamool and Youth Trinamool earlier.
Modi also has his task cut out in north Bengal. Unlike in earlier elections, when BJP used to get huge support from the Hills that could easily make up for losses in the plains of Siliguri, Modi has to carve out a narrative that can bind polarities — Gorkh-as, other Hill communities and Bengalis in the plains. While he is likely to focus on infiltration from Banglade-sh, people will be all ears on NRC, days after Amit Shah stoked the fire in Alipurd-u-ar. The Binay Tamang-led GJM has started campaigni-ng that Shah’s reference to NRC has made the Gorkha community insecure.
BJP-GJM (Gurung)-GNLF candidate Raju Singh Bista allayed such fears during his campaign at Happy Valley Tea Estate on Tuesday.
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