Prime Minister Modi Vs Mamata Banerjee In Bengal Today: Set To Hold Rallies In Cooch Behar

Lok Sabha campaign rallies are scheduled back to back where Prime Minister Narendra Modi and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will address on Thursday at Cooch Behar in north Bengal, a region where maximum electoral gains have been made by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since the 2019 elections.

This marks the first instance in this election season that Modi and the Trinamool Congress chairperson will be addressing voters of a constituency on the same day, as reported by Hindustan Times.

Photo Credit: Oneindia

Modi Vs Mamata At North Bengal's Cooch Behar

North Bengal's Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, and Jalpaiguri seats, all named after the three districts where they are located, are set to go to the polls on April 19 in the first of the seven phases Bengal will witness. All three seats were wrested from the ruling TMC by the BJP in 2019. Two of the winners, Nisith Pramanik from Cooch Behar and John Barla from Alipurduar, are serving as Union ministers of state.

On Thursday, one rally is scheduled to be addressed by Modi in Cooch Behar, while Banerjee will address two, as announced by their respective parties on Wednesday night. In 2019, the BJP secured 18 of the state's 42 Lok Sabha seats, setting a record. In North Bengal, it clinched seven out of the eight seats. The main opposition force in the eastern state aims to secure at least 25 seats this year.

Despite the BJP winning only 77 of Bengal's 294 assembly seats in the 2021 polls, against 213 grabbed by the TMC, it still managed to secure 30 out of the 54 seats in the eight north Bengal districts. However, the TMC later managed to wrest two of these North Bengal seats in the by-polls.

Banerjee has been touring the north Bengal districts and meeting voters since Sunday when she hastily took a chartered flight within hours of northwestern hitting parts of the region. The worst affected were two community blocks in Jalpaiguri district, where five people lost their lives, reported by Hindustan Times.

In preparation for a political confrontation, the prime minister was targeted on Wednesday by the chief minister's nephew and TMC national general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, for the Centre's decision to halt funds for housing projects for the poor under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) citing irregularities in implementation.

"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," Abhishek said. This statement was countered by Bengal BJP's chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya, as per media reports.

Bhattacharya stated, "The Centre stopped the funds because it is taxpayers' money. Corruption during TMC's regime has been exposed by the scams federal agencies are probing under court orders. The people of Bengal have taken their decision. They want Narendra Modi to lead the nation once again."