In yet another example of political hooliganism by TMC goons, the BJP candidate of Diamond Harbour assembly constituency Deepak Halder was attacked during his campaign. 10 workers of BJP were also injured in the attack. Sending defeat in the ongoing assembly election, TMC hooligans have been unleashing violence against BJP workers.
The injured Haldar was late rushed to hospital. The region falls are politically sensitive and violence-prone 24 South Parganas district.
Out of 31 assembly seats in 24 South Parganas, as many as 16 constituencies have over 30 per cent Muslim population. In fact, seven assembly segments have an estimated over 42 per cent Muslim voters.
“Our party nominee (Haldar) was attacked when he was in campaign trail,” one party worker told television journalists.
Diamond Harbour goes to the polls on the third phase of voting on April 6.
In 2016, Dipak Halder as Trinamool Congress nominee had won the seat by defeating Abul Hasnat of CPI(M) by a margin of 15037 votes.
It is worth mentioning that the Trinamool detractors have targeted Mamata Banerjee’s ‘Bhaipo (nephew) in the run up to this year’s polls.
The BJP is hoping to make a dent in this key assembly segment. Dipak Halder is two-time Trinamool legislator and when he quit the party his tirade was mostly directed against Abhishek Banerjee and his alleged autocratic style of functioning.
The BJP’s poll strategists think if anywhere the allegation of corruption and ‘tola baazi’ (extortion) against ‘bhaipo’ would come into play, it is the Diamond Harbour seat.
Trinamool Congress has fielded Pannalal Halder for the constituency.
BJP’s Nilanjan Roy had polled 4,70,533 votes in 2019 Lok Sabha polls in Diamond Harbour accounting for 33.39 percent of vote share. Notably, BJP’s vote share had swung by 17 percent (as against 2014 show) while CPI-M votes nosedived by 28 percent. The Congress has been further marginalised and suffered loss of 3.6 per cent of votes.
It is worth mentioning that South 24 Parganas district has witnessed political violence, clashes and even murder and the scale of violence has only increased since the 2018 panchayat elections, which was badly rigged by the state’s ruling party.
