Kolkata, March 3 (IANS) Eyeing the crucial state elections in West Bengal and keeping in line with his focus to give Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee a tough fight in her constituency of Bhabanipur in South Kolkata, Suvendu Adhikari, the Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, organised a mass interaction there on Tuesday on the occasion of the Dol Yatra festival.
Adhikari celebrated the festival in Bhabanupur with monks and the voters from the constituency.
The participation of the LoP in the Dol Yatra festival at Bhabanipur was met with enthusiasm from both the local people and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers, who were present in large numbers.
Adhikari is the legislator from Nandigram Assembly constituency in East Midnapore district. He was elected from that constituency in 2021, defeating no one else, but the Chief Minister, by a margin of just under 2,000 votes.
Later, Mamata Banerjee got elected in the bypolls from Bhabanipur and retained her chair as the Chief Minister of West Bengal for the third consecutive term.
While interacting with the local people of Bhabanipur in the morning, the LoP also issued a note of caution against “pseudo-secularism” and “atheism” and called for the “larger Hindu unity” in the forthcoming Assembly polls.
To give the Chief Minister a tough fight in Bhabanipur this time, the BJP has set up a 'war room' in that constituency, and the LoP is personally supervising the activities.
This 'war room' has been set up on the ground floor of a house at 8/1B Chakraberia Road (South) in Ward No. 70 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) area.
It may be noted that the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency was formed with eight wards of KMC -- 63, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77 and 82.
Since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP has been consistently receiving decent votes in six wards of the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency.
Political observers feel that Adhikari has taken a tactical move by focusing on Bhabanipur this time to limit the movement of the Chief Minister within that constituency during the campaign phase, leaving little room for her to move around the state for campaigning.
