Elections would be held in West Bengal in May. The political analysts anticipate a fierce battle between the Mamata Banerjee led Trinamool Congress and the BJP for the 294 seat Assembly. There have been fights between the BJP and TMC activists. The BJP has been implementing Operation Kamal along with public meetings and joining important leaders of TMC. There have been violent incidents in the state.
Mamata Banerjee made a key statement on Monday. As a counter to the strategies of BJP to come into power in West Bengal, she is not going to contest from Bhabhani Nagar, from where she has competed twice and won. She has taken a decision to contest from Nandigram, the place where the movement had started against the left parties. There is a reason for this. Nandigram is the area which brought Mamata into power. Mamata Banerjee has taken this decision as her close aide Suvendu Adhikari joined the BJP and criticized Mamata. If Suvendu Adhikari contests from here on behalf of BJP, it will be Mamata vs Suvendu Adhikari. Obviously, Mamata will dominate. So, it looks like Mamata has decided not to give the BJP a chance to score the first goal.
The TMC leader has challenged the BJP to disclose their chief ministerial candidate first. There is a reason for this challenge. There is no one to match Mamata in West Bengal BJP. If there was one… Mamata would not allow that to happen in her state. Two to three names are doing rounds when it comes to BJP. Recently, a senior BJP leader Soumitra Khan suggested the name of Bengal BJP chief Dileep Ghosh for the CM candidature, which led to a huge controversy. After this, he had to make another comment that a person from Bengal would be the CM as Ghosh is considered non-Bengali. Though cricketer Sourav Ganguly’s name was heard there is a talk that he has no political experience. Recently Mukul Roy of TMC joined BJP. He is presently vice president of the BJP. He is economically strong but the obstructions for him are bank scams and financial frauds. In this perspective, the Velur Ramakrishna Mutt’s health wing head Swami Kripakarananda Maharaj’s name has come to the fore. His original name is Debasheesh Chakravarti. He had been the topper in Bengal Medical entrance test. He did his medicine from NRS College and also served in AIIMS. He also worked in America. Being a person from Bengal, highly educated and closer to the principles of BJP, the party is in favour of his candidature. It may be mentioned here that Gorakhpur Ashram priest Yogi Adityanath Das is the CM of Uttar Pradesh.
Generally, Ramakrishna Mutt stays away from politics. Swami Kripakarananda had condemned when his name was doing rounds previously. He had said that there was no interest in politics and wanted to serve people in the path shown by Swamy Vivekananda. However, there is a campaign that the RSS is favouring his candidature and the ABVP activists also get enthusiastic when they hear his name.
