Today, the BJP released its second list of candidates for the Bengal elections, nominating 148 candidates. It includes Krishnanagar’s, Mukul Roy. It has fielded a fifth candidate, Jagannath Sarkar, in this list. At Shantipur, a parliamentarian from Ranaghat will run for office. Dilip Ghosh, the party’s state unite leader, does not appear on the list. According to sources, he would not run in the assembly elections. Rahul Sinha, a veteran Bengal unit leader, will run from Habra.
In this round, the party continued to field celebrities, nominating folk singer Ashim Sarkar from the Haringhata assembly seat. Purbasthali Uttar scientist Gobhardhan Das was dispatched.
The names for phases five, six, seven, and eight were revealed today.
The party’s first list of candidates, which was released last week, sparked massive demonstrations that lasted two days and had to be put down by police using a lathi charge.
Thousands of agitated supporters gathered outside the party’s election office in Kolkata, heckling senior leaders Mukul Roy, Arjun Singh, and Shiv Prakash. Protesters from Udaynarayanpur in Howrah joined them. People flocked in from Raidighi in South 24 Parganas in the evening. Angry BJP staff ransacked the party’s Singur office and the district headquarters office in Chinsura, both in the Hooghly district.
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The demonstration was held in protest of the BJP’s decision to field a large number of former Trinamool leaders as candidates. According to sources, the seats in question had powerful local candidates whose backers would revolt if outsiders were allowed to run. It was described as a “temporary situation” by the BJP.
Actor Arun Govil, who portrayed Lord Ram in Ramanand Sagar’s famous serial Ramayana, also joined the BJP at the conference where the names of candidates were released.
West Bengal will hold elections in eight stages, with the first on March 27 and the last on April 29. On May 2, the result will be declared.
Along with this, the Mamata Banerjee-led party filed a counter-complaint hours after the BJP asked the Election Commission to beef up security in Nandigram following an attack on its first-time candidate Suvendu Adhikari during a poll rally by TMC staff.
“In the last 24 hours, Nandigram, from where Mamata Banerjee is a candidate, saw two premeditated and mandated by BJP on instruction or in presence of Suvendu Adhikari,” stated the party’s letter to EC.
