Can she hold on to it?

The Kolkata South Lok Sabha constituency, from which the TMC leader Mamata Banerjee has been winning since 1991, (by a margin of more than 100,000 votes in 2004) has undergone major changes following delimitation. To reach a judgment whether she will retain the seat or lose it in 2009, there is no option but to go by the last municipal election held in 2005.

Judging by that result, Banerjee is lagging behind CPM by at least 72,000 votes. But in the same election, the Congress polled around 135,000 votes in the same area. Now that Congress and TMC have come together, Banerjee should have no difficulty in making good the deficit.

Banerjee’s CPI M rival, Rabin Dev, knows this and in his campaign harps on two more factors, the frustration of the unemployed youth with Mamata for opposing Tata’s Nano project; and the support of Muslim voters in Port area.
 

Total seats: 42

LEFT

FRONT: 35

TRINAMOOL: 1

Congress: 6

Mamata Banerjee admits that the Muslims had deserted her during the 2004 electionbecause of the fallout of the Gujarat riots and her association with the NDA.

But that has changed. She has snapped her links with NDA; and her championing of the farmer’s cause – of whom a large percentage is Muslim - in Nandigram and Singur, has brought the Muslims back to her.

Last year’s panchayat and municipal election results indicate this. Partha Chatterjee, the TMC spokesperson and leader of the opposition in state assembly feels that the CPM is deliberately raising doubts about her winning prospect from the newly constituted Kolkata South with a view to restricting banerjee to her constituency during the campaign. He says this is mainly because Banerjee is an anti-Left movement icon, has been successful in breaching in the hitherto solid Left vote bank in urban middle class and needs to be kept confined.