The Trinamul Congress began its Lok Sabha vote campaign from Suri from today to retain the two seats in the districts of Birbhum and Bolpur. All the elected representatives and the booth level workers attended the first meeting at district headquarters Suri, in which MP Shatabdi Roy and district chairman and deputy Speaker in the state Assembly, Dr Ashish Banerjee, were present.

“There is very limited time for the next Lok Sabha polls and please start the preparations for the next general elections with meetings and rallies,” Shatabdi Roy instructed the party workers. Dr. Ashish Banerjee, chairman of the Birbhum district TMC and deputy Speaker of state assembly said that from the core committee meeting on 16 December the dates and timings of meetings and public rallies for the Lok Sabha campaign will be announced.

Suri MLA and member of the TMc Birbhum district core committee, Bikash Roy Choudhury told the thousands of party workers present at the meeting that the party will follow the poll strategies formulated by former district president Anubrata Mondal to fight the next general elections.

Kajal Sheikh, sabhadhipati of Birbhum Zilla Parishad elaborated on the success stories of the just-concluded three tier gram panchayat elections, despite the absence of the then district president Anubrata Mondal. “The BJP leaders are like the migratory birds and visits the constituencies just after the polls are announced. But the Trinamul Congress remains for 365 days with the voters. Don’t wait and waste your time, start visiting and campaigning in your own localities,” he told the party workers.

The BJP will not seek votes in the name of development, instead will try to divide the voter playing its religious card, said Labhpur MLA Abhijit Singha. With the Lok Sabha polls approaching BJP will try to use the Ram Temple inauguration in Ayodhya as its main poll campaign, he added.

Shatabdi Roy also told the party leaders and workers to get full details of the work accomplished by the two sitting MPs in their respective constituencies in the past five years and then tell the voters. “ Visit those polling booths in which we have lost in the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 Assembly polls and try to identify our lacunae. We have to win both the seats from Birbhum in order to strengthen the arm of our party chief,” added Ms Roy.

Dr. Ashish Banerjee said that students, youth, women, workers, everybody wil organise and start campaigns in all the three sub-divisions of the district. The next core committee meeting will be held on 16 December at Rampurhat.

This will be the first Lok Sabha polls in the past twenty years when the TMC will be fighting without its firebrand former district president Anubrata Mondal. Mondal has been lodged in jail at Tihar since the past one year after being arrested by the CBI and then by the ED in the cross-border cattle smuggling case.

After the emphatic win of BJP in three states in the recently concluded Assembly polls, it appears that the Trinamul does not want to take any risks and has decided to start campaigning early in Birbhum.