The chief minister Mamata Banerjee, the candidate of Trinamul Congress for Bhawanipore constituency will start her maiden poll campaign on Wednesday from Ahindra Mancha in Chetla.

Political experts feel Miss Banerjee will have an edge over her political opponents in this bypoll due to her chief ministerial position that helped her execute several development schemes, including the recent ‘Lakshmir Bhandhar’ that saw an overwhelming response among women of this state.

Additionally, the factor that could work to her advantage is her popularity in the Bhawanipore constituency where she had been the sitting MLA for the past two terms. Experts also pointed out that the inability of the Opposition parties to declare their candidates will ultimately increase the winning chances of Miss Banerjee.

While Congress and the BJP are still struggling to declare the name of their candidates, the TMC has already begun campaigning for Miss Banerjee through wall graffiti, posters, hoarding etc.

Kamarhati MLA and a Bhawanipore resident, Madan Mitra wrote slogans on the wall at DL Khan Road, just a day after the by-poll was announced while Sobhandeb Chatterjee, who resigned from his seat to make the way for Miss Banerjee, too, participated in a similar campaign.

Meanwhile, Trinamul’s ‘Jai Hind Bahini’ has come up with a new slogan for this poll,” Unnayan ghore ghore/ ghorer meye Bhawanipure”. The party felt the slogan conveys how under Miss  Banerjee’s leadership, every household in the state was benefitted from various development schemes and now that Miss Banerjee will be again contesting from her “home ground”, voters of this constituency will be more than happy to vote for her.  Earlier, in the 2021 Assembly poll, Trinamul won a landslide victory with its slogan “Bangla Nijer Mayekey Chai”(Bengal wants its own daughter).

Meanwhile, Trinamul’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee returned to Kolkata this afternoon to take part in Mamata Banerjee’s first election campaign.  He also released the list of 20 campaigners including Miss Banerjee. Others are the party’s state president Subrata Bakshi, party’s secretary-general Partha Chatterjee and ministers Subrata Mukherjee, Shovandeb Chattopadhyay, Firhad Hakim, Aroop Biswas, and MPs Saugata Roy Sukhendu Shekhar Roy.

The star campaigners will include party’s MPs and MLAs from the silver screen such as MPs Deb, Mimi Chakraborty, and Satabdi Roy. The star MLAs are June Maliah, Raj Chakraborty, Sayani Ghosh, and cricketer Manoj Tiwari.

Abhishek Banerjee said,” We will take the BJP head-on. We will definitely visit BJP-ruled- states and make our presence felt. The BJP failed to defeat us politically and are now using central agencies like ED and CBI, Income Tax to threaten us. We will not rest till we remove the autocrat government from the Centre in 2024.”