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Assembly Election 2021 Highlights : It’s the assembly elections season in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and the Union Territory of Puducherry. Polling happened in a single phase in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on April 6, while voters in Assam cast their votes in three phases. Polling in Bengal is happening in eight phases. Of these, four phases have concluded. The next phase will take place on April 17. The election campaign and canvassing have continued there in full swing. Counting of votes in all states will happen on May 2. In Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress is fighting to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s surge at bay. The saffron party has shown a dramatic electoral rise in the state over the last few years. In Assam, the state’s governing BJP is hoping to retain power even as it faces ‘Mahajot’, the joint opposition alliance comprising the Congress, AIUDF and other regional parties. Congress and the Left Front, which are allies in Bengal, are competing for power in Kerala. The Congress-led UDF and the ruling LDF have been winning alternate elections since the early 1980s. Tamil Nadu’s ruling AIADMK has continued its alliance with the BJP amid a challenge from MK Stalin-led DMK and its alliance partners. However, one of the key things to watch out for in the southern state is how some of the smaller parties – including that of actor Kamal Haasan and TTV Dhinakaran’s AMMK – may impact the poll outcome. With their government having collapsed due to defections weeks before the election, V Narayanasamy-led Congress is battling the BJP-NR Congress alliance in Puducherry. Stay tuned for the latest news and developments:
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TMC MP Mahua Moitra lashed out at the Election Commission (EC) on April 15 for conducting polls over eight phases in West Bengal amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Equating the decision to hold eight-phased Assembly elections in West Bengal with “criminal negligence bordering on manslaughter”, she wrote on Twitter: “It is certainly criminal negligence bordering on manslaughter on part of @ECISVEEP to mandate 8 phase election in WB in middle of worst pandemic.”
Election rallies and political gatherings have been a common place for quite some time now even as the deadly second wave of COVID-19 is sweeping the country.
While polling in Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry ended on April 6, four of the eight phases of Assembly polls are yet to be held in West Bengal with very few leaders, across parties, seemingly paying regard to health protocols despite Election Commission of India flagging instances of star campaigners and political leaders not wearing masks while campaigning.
A delegation of Trinamool Congress MPs will meet Election Commission officials in Delhi on Wednesday afternoon, the party said. The delegation will include parliamentarians Derek O'Brien, Kalyan Banerjee, Pratima Mondal and Santanu Sen. They are scheduled to reach the Election Commission of India (ECI) office at 3.30 pm.
The meeting will happen days after the poll body barred TMC supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from campaigning for 24 hours. She had on Tuesday sat on a 3.5-hour-long dharna against the poll panel's decision.
On Monday, shortly after the Election Commission barred Mamata Banerjee from campaigning for 24 hours, her party alleged the poll panel was behaving like a "wing of the BJP" and its decision smacks of authoritarianism.
The urban areas of West Bengal have traditionally been with Mamata Banerjee and shunned the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but in these elections, the BJP is making an audacious attempt to sway the urban voters too by stressing that they are also impacted by the ills of the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) government and no longer need to compromise with Banerjee as chief minister (CM).
On Tuesday, News18 attended Home Minister Amit Shah’s rally in Bidhannagar seat that covers the posh Salt Lake City area of Kolkata and BJP President J.P. Nadda’s ‘Intellectuals Meet’ in Rajarhat New Town, another posh area of Kolkata, to witness their fervent appeal to the urban voters. The BJP has also plastered Modi hoardings across Kolkata over the last week.
Both these seats poll on Saturday. “The day is not far when the problem of infiltration (from the borders) will enter Kolkata too. Other parties cannot stop this as they see in it their vote banks. Only BJP can stop it,” Shah said in Bidhannagar.
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Madan Mitra, veteran Trinamool leader and former Bengal transport minister, resembles the proverbial character of Sancho Panza in Don Quixote. He is realistically funny in the state’s high voltage elections where violence and deaths are routine.
Mitra, who lost from the Kamarhati assembly constituency in north 24 Parganas during the last assembly polls, doesn’t want to remember the 2016 defeat at the hands of Manas Mukherjee, a CPM rival. He is confident he will win hands down this time.
He is in full swing, sorry full mood, as the first phase of elections ended in Bengal on March 27, 2021.
A day before Holi, Mitra celebrated the festival—popular as Dol in Kolkata—on a vessel in the Ganges with three actors-turned BJP nominees. Payel Sarkar, contesting from Kolkata’s Behala East, Srabonti Chatterjee, contesting from Kolkata’s Behala West and Tanushree Chakraborty, contesting from Howrah’s Shyampur constituency, joined Mitra and sang a 1987 Asha Bhosle song Khelbo Holi Rong Debona which translates into “We will celebrate Holi but won’t splash colours on you”.
The news triggered both surprise and shock in the BJP camp.
Dilip Ghosh, the BJP West Bengal president, remembers the day he walked into a golf course in Kolkata.
It was on a balmy August morning last year. India was grappling with the pandemic. Ghosh wanted to prove a point, he was tired of being labelled as a man who knows nothing but still aspires for the moon.
Everyone, including the caddies, laughed behind his back. The news spread like wildfire and soon the golf course was swarming with workers of the ruling Trinamool Congress. WhatsApp messages and photographs flew across India.
Within seconds, Ghosh became a subject of ridicule, the moot point pushed by his political rival revolved around some sarcastic laughter: A Sanghi in a golf course? Ideally, he should be at a Hanuman Temple, right?
Babul Supriyo, Minister of State for Environment, Forest & Climate Change, says the BJP’s match-winning mantra in cash-strapped West Bengal would be economic development. That, claims Supriyo, is the only way to succeed, the only way to bring all communities on the same page.
Supriyo, who will contest from the Tollygunge neighborhood in the southern fringes of Kolkata, said West Bengal has lived in a state of denial for over four decades.
Union Minister and BJP leader V Muraleedharan called Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan a 'Covidiot', saying went to vote despite testing positive for coronavirus.
"'Covidiot' you know what it means. There's no other word that can be used for a CM who continuously violates COVID protocol. As per doctors of Calicut Medical College, Kerala CM tested positive on 4 April and on 6 April, he voted without following protocols," Muraleedharan said.
Elections in Kerala were held in a single phase on April 6 and the results will be declared on May 2.
