Mithun Chakraborty, four other actors in BJP’s list of campaigners

• Follow

“Marbo ekhane, lash porbe soshane”(I shall hit you here and the corpse will appear at the cremation ground)

“Ami joldhora noi, heleborao noi, ekebarey jat gokhro. Ek chobolei chobi” (I am not a non-poisonous snake. I am king cobra. One bite and you are dead”.)

“Ami gorbito aami Bangali” (I am proud to be a Bengali.)

The man who uttered these melodramatic lines in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Kolkata’s historic Brigade Parade Ground has been formally named by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to campaign in the West Bengal assembly elections.

Apart from Chakraborty, other actors who would be campaigning for the party for the first time are Yash Dasgupta, Srabanti Chatterjee, Payal Sarkar and Hiran Chatterjee.

This list is for campaigning for the first phase on March 27.

With this formal list being put out, the run-up to the elections would see the ruling party in the state and the main challenger pitting start power versus star power.

Mamata Banerjee has already announced her list of candidates for the polls and has named nearly a dozen actors who would be contesting for her party for the first time.

Though Chakraborty would be canvassing for votes for BJP for the first time, he is a veteran campaigner, having earlier addressed public meetings in favour of veteran Marxist leader and former chief minister of Bengal Jyoti Basu, his cabinet colleague Subhash Chakraborty, Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee and former Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.

The BJP list of campaigners has more names from the film and entertainment world such as Roopa Ganguly, Locket Chatterjee and Babul Supriyo, but they are already established faces in politics too.

The elections in West Bengal will be held in eight phases from March 27 to April 29.

The list a total of 40 names and begins with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While 70-year-old Mithun Chakraborty is the party’s prize catch and joined BJP in presence of Modi in Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground on March 7, others joined a few days earlier.

Super star of yesteryear, Chakraborty is a Bengali, has a screen image of a man beating odds to emerge as a messiah of the downtrodden.

If his small speech at Brigade Parade Ground in any indication, he would reel off his famous on-screen dialogues in the public meetings, leaving little to imagination as to whom he wants to deliver a venomous bite or send packing to the cremation ground.

According to political observers Chakraborty’s image will come handy for BJP that is battling Mamata Banerjee’s strident campaign that the ruling party at the Centre is a party that is alien to the culture and ethos of Bengal.

The elections in Bengal are bitter this time with BJP sensing an opportunity to unseat the Mamata Banerjee government that has ruled the state since May 2011.

While this will be the BJP’s first serious attempt to capture power in this state, the stakes are extremely high for ruling Trinamool Congress which has already suffered a blow in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when the saffron party won 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats and 40% vote share in the state.