Cooch Behar on edge as polls kick off tomorrow

Kolkata: Trinamool and BJP are set for an eyeball-to-eyeball electoral confrontation in Cooch Behar, one of two among West Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha constituencies going to polls on Thursday.
The underlying tension in this north Bengal constituency headed for a close contest was apparent from the way Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Mamata Banerjee tried to woo voters till the campaign for the first-phase polling drew to an end on Tuesday.
The tension has only been accentuated by the Cooch Behar superintendent of police (SP)’s transfer at the last moment. Residents fear violence in the next 24 hours and also on election day, given the desperation to upend the poll matrix in the area.
BJP candidate and turncoat Nisith Pramanik, once a district functionary of Youth Trinamool, has an axe to grind. Pramanik wants to avenge his expulsion from Trinamool. The BJP candidate, who has 11 criminal cases against him, is all set to offset Trinamool’s vote machinery led by minister Rabindranath Ghosh. Pramanik mastered this art when he was with Youth Trinamool, resulting in a series of clashes in Cooch Behar town when there was no election. In fact, he had led the TMC brigade during the 2018 panchayat polls.
This time, Ghosh and Trinamool candidate Paresh Adhikary will be leading the Trinamool brigade. Adhikary, also a turncoat who dumped Forward Bloc in 2018 to join Trinamool, is an experienced hand.
CM Banerjee was in the region for two days taking stock of poll preparations.
The other constituency going to polls on Thursday is Alipurduar, the land of tea gardens. BJP has been improving its vote share in this constituency over the years. Party bigwigs Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah reached out to this parliamentary seat to wrest it from TMC.
John Barla, once a leader of Adivasi Vikas Parishad, is the BJP candidate and Dasrath Tirkey of Trinamool is the main contender. Unlike other Adivasi leaders, Barla enjoys the support of Gorkhas, who have an increasing presence in the foothills.
CM Banerjee has painted Barla as a “troublemaker” during campaigning. “Who is John Barla? He is the person who was the cause of trouble — from triggering riots to clashes between communities,” she had said in Alipurduar.