Come 2021, the Assembly polls would be a straight fight between the ruling Trinamul Congress and the BJP while the Congress-CPI-M combine whose performance was hardly the stuff to write home about in the 2019 Parliamentary elections will continue to be a bit player next year.

After making this contention, a TMC party insider said, “It’s a myth that the CPIM has transferred its twothird votes to the BJP. Had it been a fact, such quantum of votes ought to have been cast for the CPI-M in the last year election,” he added. He also rubbished the theory of polarisation before the Lok Sabha poll by the BJP Central leadership.

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The party insider stated there was a certain amount of polarisation and the doorstep delivery of the benefits of the state government’s developmental schemes could counter the ‘villification’ campaign of the Saffron camp.” Asked why Mamata Banerjee was projected as “Banglar Garbo Mamata (BGM)”, a senior party leader said that 2021 would be a fight between Modi and Mamata.

If the BJP Central leadership nominates someone from the state cadre, then definitely we have an advantage. No leader from the BJP state cadre can match Mamata~ she is much ahead of the rest. But Modiji is definitely more charismatic leader than Mamata Banerjee and therefore we are playing this personality cult, the party insider said.

“By launching BGM, we are trying to portray Mamata Banerjee as the face of Bengal against Modijiwho will be an outsider. If she was to be pitted against Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee then our strategy would have been different because both of them are from Bengal,” a senior party leader said.

Asked how poll strategist Prashant Kishor’s ‘Didi ke Bolo (DKB) platform has helped the party to reach out to the people, the party’s all India general secretary Subrata Bakshi said, “This programme is mainly launched to keep a check on the downslide in the party and on the psychological edge which the BJP had after the huge win in the last Lok Sabha poll.”

“Our DKB campaign is like a test match that has to be played session by session and not like T20 match,” he added. He, however agreed that 2021 is a tough battle but hoped that the Trinamul Congress will pull through. In the last four months, Bakshi felt that it yielded results as no Trinamul workers were leaving the party rather those who joined the BJP after Lok Sabha poll, rejoined the Trinamul Congress, he added.

“We are working on different perspectives. Even our party supremo who took up the national cause like NRC, CAA and NPR issues preferred to be reticent on Ram Mandir issue or Sabarimala issue as those affect both UP and Kerala voters and not the people of Bengal,” the party insider said. “The chief minister is a constitutional post and now she is taking all positive steps that a chief minister should take,” he added.

A senior party leader said, “Trinamul Congress came to power not because of Prashant Kishor but he definitely helped us with strategy,” he added. Bakshi said that by launching DKB platform, “We were suppose to reach 10,000 villages in 1,00 days with 1,000 people. We have almost reached more than Nine thousand villages in 165 days as there were pujas, Kali puja in between,” he added.

“But DKB was more or less launched to gratify different public demands like disbursement of widow pension, job in death in harness case, admission to a hospital but then we realised that so far the state government has announced 49 public beneficiary schemes but hardly few of such schemes have reached the common people,” he said. The BJP tried to imitate our DKB programme but their ‘chai pe charcha’ and ‘Dada k bolo’ are super-flops, Bakshi added.