By no stretch of the imagination can the Bhawanipore bypolls and the elections to Samsergunj and Jangipur Assembly constituencies slated to be held on Thursday be called watershed electoral events, since predictable results are expected from all of them.

The significance of the three poll battles would lie in the victory margin of chief minister Mamata Banerjee at Bhawanipore, and the clear lack of coordination between Congress and Left Front in the two other seats. After her defeat to her onetime Cabinet colleague, Suvendu Adhikari at Nandigram, the chief minister is in no doubt of her victory at Bhawanipore.

But to achieve a victory margin in keeping with her political stature, she has deployed several senior leaders of her party in her campaign. Trinamul’s landslide triumph in the recent Assembly elections despite a clutch of top BJP leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi campaigning against it have elevated Miss Banerjee to the status of a national leader.

A thumping victory in Bhawanipore will help cement her position. The Congress’s withdrawal from the bypoll will not improve the prospects of CPI-M nominee, Srijib Biswas at Bhawanipore. Rather, it is expected to aid the victory prospects of the chief minister. But it would be interesting to know whether what remains of the Congress support base in this constituency votes for the Front nominee or shifts its allegiance elsewhere.

Ever since the first general elections, Bhowanipore has been a Congress stronghold; and even after the emergence of the Trinamul, it still retains some pockets of influence. It is the support of this segment of voters that the BJP is eyeing to take some wind off the Trinamul’s sails.

Aware of this game plan, the ruling party’s campaigners have left no stone unturned in their efforts, even when they are putting the tag of a political minnow on the BJP nominee, Priyanka Tibrewal. And neither the Trinamul nor the Left can afford to overlook the fact that sizeable pockets of BJP influence have cropped up in Bhawanipore over the past few years. Only an overwhelming verdict in Miss Banerjee’s favour can again make it her pocket borough.

Signs of the electoral alliance between Left Front and Congress loosening at the seams, meanwhile, are discernible in Samsergunj and Jangipur, where the deferred elections are also to be held on Thursday. The coordination and understanding which marked the coming together of the two political outfits since the 2016 state Assembly elections is markedly absent.

It is clear for all who care to see that the Congress is not campaigning for the RSP nominee Jane Alam Mian at Jangipur, while the state of affairs is curiouser at Samsergunj. Binning all prospects of the Front and Congress joining forces, Front nominee Md Mudassar Hossain of CPI-M and Jaidur Rahman of the Congress are both in the electoral fray.