We’ve got definite tip-off that ‘Team Subhendu Adhikari’ has become hyperactive here to cause a debacle for Dilip Ghosh, said Kirti Azad, the Trinamul Congress candidate for the Bardhaman Durgapur Lok Sabha seat here this morning. The cricketer-turnedpolitician Azad kicked off his intense campaign from morning walk in the Durgapur Steel township today, just as his opponent from BJP Dilip Ghosh is known to do.

Azad, accompanied by the district Trinamul Congress president Narendranath Chakraborty, met steel unit workers, housewives, junior footballers, cultural groups packed after his morning walk at Steel Authority’s Major Park here. He also played football with the local youngsters there. It was the Durgapur industrial zone that had given Surinder Singh Ahluwalia, the BJP candidate for the segment in 2019, a lead margin of 76,000 votes. Azad however, said today,: “Most of the BJP cadres and supporters in this industrial hub don’t like an audacious Dilip, who always talks nonsense and they will sabotage his chances.

Advertisement

They are actually the cadres of Suvendu Adhikari and they’ve set their mind to ensure a pack-up for Dilip Ghosh this time.” Ghosh, incidentally has left for Andaman today for campaigning. In a statement, Ghosh said, “Since I’d served the Andaman island for a long time as a swayamsevak, the party has now assigned me to go for a brief period for campaigning there.” Azad, about Ghosh’s Andaman trip, said: “He should better understand how his party has hinted him to get busy in the islands.” The district BJP meanwhile has mocked Azad for ‘copying’ Ghosh’s morning walk style and said: “A candidate who’d to take shelter inside a temple when his party men shuffled shouldn’t talk like this about an ‘iron man’ like Dilip Ghosh.”