WB campaigning ends with a whimper

Calcutta, Feb 26: The campaign for Saturday's final phase of polling in West Bengal ended with a whimper. It turned out to be a day of cance...

int(2)

Calcutta, Feb 26: The campaign for Saturday’s final phase of polling in West Bengal ended with a whimper. It turned out to be a day of cancellations for the big shows. All the four scheduled meetings of Sonia Gandhi, who was to end her nationwide campaign in West Bengal today, were cancelled as her helicopter could not fly to the venues because of inclement weather.

Mamata Banerjee, who planned to wind up her campaign with a “great procession” across Calcutta also cancelled the show. At the last moment, she decided to pack up the campaign with several meetings in different parts of her South Calcutta constituency. Even the CPI(M) had its share of cancellations. Chief Minister Jyoti Basu’s meeting in Howrah was ruined by a hailstorm.

Only the BJP seemed to have good luck. The highlights of the party’s last-hour campaign were two meetings addressed by Shatrughan Sinha and Sushma Swaraj at Dum Dum, where party candidate and State BJP president, Tapan Sikdar, is facing CPI(M)’s Nirmal Chatterjee. Sikdar haseasily surpassed the Congress candidate, Prodyot Guha, as the Marxist’s main contender for the seat.

Story continues below this ad

The cancellation of Sonia Gandhi’s meetings came as as a big dampener for the Congress as the party is in desperate need for another dose of morale boosters before the final phase of polling.

Party leaders recalled that Rajiv Gandhi had addressed huge meetings in and around Calcutta on the final day of campaigning during the 1987 Assembly elections. Although it did not upset the Marxists, the party needed Sonia this time to fight dangers from the CPI(M) and Trinamul Congress.

At Serampore, 30 km from here, local Congress leader and MLA, Abdul Mannan, pleaded with the crowd, “In 1987, Rajivji could not make it to one meeting, but we won it. Let’s have it that way in Serampore now.” But the crowd was too disappointed to respond.

Despite the brave front that the party leaders put up, they were worried about large-scale defection of grassroots workers to the Trinamul Congress. This was evident in most ofthe constituencies which went to the polls in the first phase on February 22.

Story continues below this ad

Mamata is optimistic about the turnout of voters during the first phase of election in West Bengal-and claims her party will get 22 out of the 29 seats it is contesting.

While this is designed to boost her supporters’ morale for Saturday’s poll, there were clear signs of her party overshadowing the Congress and proving the Marxists’s main challenger everywhere.