West Bengal Lok Sabha Election Results 2019: A deadly serious battle, with all the affair of a Bollywood thriller with equally important stakes at Asansol will be decided on Wednesday, the victory between TMC MP and veteran actress Moon Moon Sen and Babul Supriyo, BJP MP and union minister will be decided.
Indian playback singer, with credits in Hindi and Bengali cinema, Supriyo, has been campaigning in the seat for nearly a month before the election was announced while Sen —who has credits in Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi and Kannada films — joined the TMC in 2014. The daughter of Bengali actress Suchitra Sen and Dibanath Sen, the great grandson of the Diwan of Tripura, Sen defeated CPI(M)’s nine-time MP Basudeb Acharia from Bankura.
Supriyo, similarly joined politics in 2014 and ended the 25-year-old dominion of the Left in the seat. Traditionally, a part of the coal mining belt of Bengal, the demography of the seat that borders Jharkhand that has changed over the years.
Meanwhile, the fact that Moon Moon Sen will be challenging union minister Babul Supriyo, the sitting MP from Asansol isn't just because of her glam quotient. The reasons for her surprise candidature, party leaders explained, could be found in Bankura and the TMC’s internal feuds. She was dubbed a giant killer after she defeated nine-time CPI(M) MP Basudeb Acharia in Bankura in 2014. But things haven’t gone so well since then for her in the seat, admitted TMC leaders.
“She is very unpopular at Bankura. The local TMC leaders in the area have long been complaining that she was hardly ever present in the seat and TMC’s popularity had waned. The BJP, meanwhile, made steady inroads,” said a TMC district leader from Bankura. In 2016, BJP finished third in four of the seven assembly segments that constituted the Lok Sabha seat – something which sent alarm bells ringing within the TMC. In the Panchayat polls, while the BJP performed well in most tribal-dominated districts – this wasn’t the case with Bankura. But a BJP state committee leader claimed, “The party was only able to field candidates in about 26.5% of the seats. The reason is that the TMC was scared to expose their weakness here.”
The problem though, a TMC leader admitted, was that Sen’s campaign had been marred with various issues. “It never got off to a very good start. She didn’t really connect with the people, and while there is sizable anger against Babul Supriyo — perhaps someone else would have been a better candidate.”
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