Prime Minister Narendra Modi and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee are scheduled for addressing back-to-back Lok Sabha campaign rallies, which are scheduled for Thursday at Cooch Behar in north Bengal. Cooch Behar is a region where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made maximum electoral gains after the 2019 elections.
This will be the first time that PM Modi and Mamata Banerjee will be seen rallying and addressing the voters for the first time in the same place at the same day. North Bengal’s Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar seats, are set to have the polls on April 19 during the first of the seven phases which Bengal will witness. While Modi is scheduled for addressing one rally in Cooch Behar on Thursday, on the other hand, Banerjee will address two rallies, as announced by their parties on Wednesday night.
In 2019, the BJP bagged 18 out of the 42 Lok Saha seats in West Bengal, creating a record. In north Bengal, it secured seven out of the eight seats marking a significant majority win.
Meanwhile, Banerjee can be seen touring the north Bengal districts and meeting and interacting with the voters since Sunday. She hurriedly took a chartered flight within hours after the news of strong winds had hit parts of the region. Two community blocks in Jalpaiguri district, where five people died, were the worst affected.
Taking a dig on PM Modi, the chief minister’s nephew and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee said, “I expect him (Modi) to furnish a white paper on the amount paid to Bengal under PMAY after the BJP lost the assembly polls in 2021. Had people been living in pucca houses they would not have faced the wrath of the massive storm.”
