Fate of 111 candidates from nine constituencies of south Bengal hangs in the balance

KOLKATA: Nine constituencies of south Bengal will vote on Sunday in which around 1.5 crore voters will decide the fate of 111 candidates. The Lok Sabha seats that will go to polls on Sunday include Kolkata South, Kolkata North, Dum Dum, Basirhat, Barasat, Diamond Harbour, Jadavpur, Jaynagar (SC) and Mathurapur (SC).
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s erstwhile seat, south Kolkata also comes under this phase.

Of significant contests, two seats that would be keenly watched are the south Kolkata seat and Diamond Harbour, the seat of Banerjee’s nephew --Abhishek Banerjee.

These nine seats are spread across three districts of Kolkata, South and North 24 Paraganas.

According to central agencies, there are apprehensions of violence during polls which prompted the election commission to deploy about 800 companies of central forces in this phase.

Prime minister Narendra Modi addressed four rallies in Dum Dum, Diamond Harbour, Mathurapur and Basirhat constituencies.

According to BJP sources, three of these four seats are in the list of BJP’s ‘advantage seats’ while Diamond Harbour is crucial for the Trinamool Congress.

Of these four seats, BJP won Dum Dum in 1998 and 1999. This is the only seat that BJP had in Bengal before 2009. BJP has fielded Shamik Bhattacharya, a former MLA against Trinamool’s veteran sitting MP Sougata Roy.

In Jadavpur and Basirhat, TMC has fielded two young actors of Tollywood. Mimi Chakrabarty has been fielded in Jadavpur against BJP’s Anupam Hazra, a sitting MP and a TMC defector. In Basirhat, the constituency that is located near the Bangladesh border, TMC has fielded Nusrat Jahan against BJP’s state unit general secretary Sayantan Basu.