The campaign for the 31 seats in West Bengal assembly polls came to end end on Saturday.
These seats, spread across West Midnapore, Burdwan and Banukra districts, are scheduled to go for second part of the phase one polls on 11 April.
This will decide the fate of 163 candidates including 21 women.
The campaign for this phase has been incredibly high-pitched with all parties bringing in powerful names to convince the voters to vote in favour of their respective parties.
Among those who campaigned in Bankura on 6 April was also the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. However, to the embarrassment of Singh and his party the BJP, the home minister had to address a near-empty ground.
The empty chairs, as reported by this Bengali daily (see below), left the state party leaders red-faced.
This also did not chime with the confidence of an impressive performance in Bengal shown by both Singh and more recently his cabinet colleague Ravi Shankar Prasad.
In his speech, Singh highlighted the ‘atrocities’ of Trinamool Congress under Mamata Banerjee-led government.
Although Singh, in his speech did say that “If voted to power, we will also change the situation in Bengal’ just the way the BJP had shown through ‘good governance (sushashan) in states like Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Rajasthan.’
But, if the empty chairs in Bankura is anything to go by, the wait for the BJP’s dream to wrest power in Bengal may just take a little longer to fulfill.
