Mamata kick starts election campaign

Thousands of supporters joined her as Mamata Banerjee kicked start her election campaign today with a 'Padayatra' in the southern fringe of Kolkata. Mamata started her campaign with a walk-on from Thakurpukur to Behala in support of two of her candidates Partha Chatterjee, the opposition leader in the last assembly, and Kolkata's Mayor Shovan Chatterjee. From Thakurpukur, Mamata took to walk on Diamond Harbour Road and ended her journey at Behala. As she started her walk, thousands of onlookers thronged on both sides of Diamond Harbour Road to see her and many of them joined her walk. On Tuesday, Mamata will walk in North Kolkata from Sinthee to Beliaghata, and on Thursday she will walk from Park Circus to Rajabazar to campaign for her candidates. In Dum Dum, where Mamata has put up Bratya Basu, a reputed theatre personality but new entrant in politics, has begun his campaign in similar fashion against Goutam Deb, a state minister and senior CPI (M) leader.

While Mamata was doing her 'padayatra', the CPI (M) chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee was busy trying to win back the Muslim voters to the Left side. The chief minister attended a meeting of the teachers of the Madrasa Board at Rabindra Sadan. The chief minister tried to explain how the Left Front government had taken a number of measures to help the minority community including reservation for the backward section among the Muslims in government jobs and scholarships for the minority students. In the last one week, Buddhadev Bhattacharjee had campaigned intensively in his own constituency Jadavpur and addressed a number of rallies. In Jadavpur, the TMC has put up Manish Gupta, a retired IAS, who had served as home secretary and chief secretary under Bhattacherjee.