Bengal panchayat polls: Mamata Banerjee to hit the campaign trail on Monday

Kolkata, June 24 (IANS) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will, on Monday, kick-start her full-scale campaign for the July 8 panchayat elections in the state.

As per the schedule, the chief minister will start her campaign programme from Cooch Behar district in North Bengal with a public rally.

Party sources said that she will be reaching Cooch Behar on Sunday night only.

A senior party leader said that after Cooch Behar, the chief minister is also likely to address a similar rally at Alipurduar district, the details of which are yet to be finalised.

"Recently, a meeting of the party's top leadership was conducted at the chief ministers' residence to finalise the campaign strategy for the rural civic body polls. There the chief minister clearly directed all the top leaders to take the polls with equal seriousness like Lok Sabha and Assembly polls and hence take part in the campaign process with equal seriousness.

"So going by the proverb 'practice what you preach' the chief minister is herself participating in the campaign process this time," said a senior party leader who did not wish to be named.

According to political observers, the chief minister's campaign kick-off from North Bengal is an indication of the importance that the ruling party leadership is stressing on the region considering that in 2019 Lok Sabha polls not a single constituency in the region came to the kitty of Trinamool Congress.

In fact, the party national general secretary and Lok Sabha member Abhishek Banerjee too started his recently concluded mass-outreach programme from Cooch Behar district only. Even in the 2021 West Bengal polls, BJP's performance from the constituencies in North Bengal was extraordinarily better than the other pockets in the state.

In fact, a section of the senior Trinamool Congress leadership has also admitted in private that the results of the panchayat elections in the rural civic body polls will be an indication of how the trend will be in the big battle of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.