Inside Krishnanagar, the land of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu that resonates with chants of 'Jai Shri Ram'

The ruling Trinamool Congress is up for a stringent fight in Nadia's Krishnanagar amid a Hindutva upsurge and with national issues taking centre-stage over the local woes.

The BJP is targeting Krishnanagar, the land of 15th century Bengali saint Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and home to the globally-known ISCKON, banking on its vote share of last Lok Sabha polls and the inroads it made during the rural polls of 2018. It is also one of the few seats in the state that the party has ever won.

During the national elections of 1999, BJP's Satyabrata Mookherjee had bagged the seat in alliance with then newly-born Trinamool Congress. He had then become a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and also headed the party in the state.

This time the party has fielded former Indian football team captain Kalyan Chaubey, who is looking to wrest the seat from Trinamool Congress, which has held this constituency for the last decade in a region -- south Bengal -- considered a stronghold of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

The constituency is witnessing a four-cornered contest this time.

"The BJP's candidate is an outsider. Had they fielded Jalu babu (as Satyabrata Mookherjee is locally known), the seat would have been a cakewalk for them" said a man in his 50s, unwilling to give his name, sipping tea at a roadside stall outside the district collectorate.

Hearing that, another man going through the day's newspaper raised his head and said, "The BJP has given ticket to someone like Pragya Thakur. People now know everything and see everything. You can't fool them."
He said that his party is reaching out to each and every voter with issues like farm woes, unemployment and industrial slowdown due to demonetisation. "We believe in 'think nationally and act locally'. The issues that the rest of the country is facing is also affecting Krishnanagar."
On the other side, exuding confidence about her victory, Trinamool Congress candidate Mahua Moitra said, "The BJP has never won this seat on their own. They won this seat once with support from Mamata Banerjee. Even their greatest candidate (Satyabrata Mookherjee) was beaten twice by Tapas Paul and CPI(M)'s Jyotirmoyee Sikdar. At the height of Modi wave in 2014, they came third."