Kolkata, June 10 (IANS) West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress on Monday changed its organisational observer for the eight Lok Sabha seats in north Bengal, replacing Power Minister Arup Biswas, who held the role, with Municipal & Urban Development Minister and Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) Mayor Firhad Hakim.
Party insiders said that the decision was prompted by the party’s dissatisfactory results in the eight Lok Sabha seats in north Bengal compared to the excellent performance of the party in the remaining 34 Lok Sabha constituencies in south Bengal.
Of the eight Lok Sabha constituencies in north Bengal, the Trinamool could only bag Cooch Behar, while the Congress won from Maldaha-Dakshin, and the BJP retained control over the remaining six – Raiganj, Balurghat, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, and Maldaha-Uttar.
In 2019, while the Congress won Maldaha-Dakshin, the remaining seven constituencies in north Bengal elected BJP candidates.
Trinamool sources said that although the performance had been marginally better this time compared to 2019, the top leadership felt that it could have been better had the organisational lapses there could have been addressed at the beginning. There are complaints that often the district- and block-level leaderships of the party did not present the proper picture of the ground-level realities to the party high command. Insiders said that to an extent, the slow strengthening of the Congress-Left Front bloc’s organisational base in north Bengal was also overlooked, considering that in the two constituencies of Raiganj and Maldaha-Uttar, the massive dent made by the Congress candidates in the Muslim votes had ultimately smoothened the path for the BJP to win these seats.
Even the issues of infighting in the party in north Bengal were not also addressed properly, insiders added.
–IANS
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