This is the first time in her regime, the charismatic Trinamool' chief is campaigning in the rural areas in the wake of some change of public opinion arising from resentment over successive scams, adverse court orders and last and not the least widely reported incidents of violence in the run up to the rural polls. North Bengal has never been a part of Trinamool's sphere of influence. And the chief minister seeks a change in political scene in the area. In the panchayat polls scheduled on July 8.

After all, seven BJP MPs are from north Bengal. They include state party chief Sukanta Majumdar and of course Nisith Pramanik elected from Coochbehar and presently the Union minister of State for Home affairs.

Of the 54 legislative assembly segments in north Bengal, the voters have chosen 35 BJP representatives to voice their causes. Wheel chair bound and campaigning on a gammy leg, the Trinamool chief was the chief architect of her party's electoral triumph in 2021 Assembly polls. Again just on June 27, she got injured in the course of her poll campaign while returning from Coochbehar in a helicopter. She is presently recovering in her Kalighat house.

During this three day tour from Sunday to last Tuesday, the Trinamool supremo held public meetings as also party workers meetings to enthuse the TMC members who are engaged in a bitter fight in this part of the state dominated by the BJP.

Panchayat elections scheduled to be held in the state on 8 July offers the Trinamool chief an opportunity to pull up her party organisation by its shoe laces in this area. After all, the rural polls are a litmus test of grassroot democracy.

Once Trinamool is entrenched in the north Bengal panchayats, rolling back the BJP hegemony in the Lok Sabha constituencies and the state Assembly segments will be a mere matter of time. Beginning her party's rural poll campaign from north Bengal, the chief minister has a bigger picture in her mind - statewide Trinamool hegemony.

Several trips by the chief minister to north Bengal every year ever since Trinamool came to power have failed to cut much with the populace. Lack of success in successive electoral battles is a pointer to it.

Arguably no other place in north Bengal other than Darjeeling represent the game plans of Trinamool to gain ascendancy coming to nought. Gorkha populace's demand for a separate state at the Queen of the Hills had confounded the Left Front regime and Trinamool "inherited" it after replacing the Red regime.

Much associated with Bengali psyche, Darjeeling where Chittaranjan Das and Sister Nivedita breathed their last have long ceased to be a stronghold of a party from the plains. To cut a long story short, the residents of this Lok Sabha constituency have chosen to support BJP nominees over the decades.

Electoral success continues to elude TMC though a canny Banerjee had scattered the ranks of the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha, an outfit which had been BJP's principal prop. While the BJP has maintained an ambivalent stand on granting statehood status, Trinamool has opposed it categorically.

BJP retaining Darjeeling remains an eyesore for Banerjee as it is the focal point of the saffron outfit gaining ground in north Bengal. Nor does she find a marked presence of her party in other areas of north Bengal where the BJP still surpasses the TMC in strength, though in 2021 assembly polls, TMC fared better.

Mamata Banerjee’s address at Coochbehar, a part of Alipurduar Lok Sabha seat is a pointer to her bid to gain a toehold in a parliamentary constituency where all the seven Assembly segments are represented by Opposition legislators. Her desperation was palpable as she called upon the voters to slap her rural poll nominees for past mistakes but sought their support in the coming rural polls all the same.

What lands the Trinamool game plan in north Bengal in a big problem is the preference of the voters to support a party at the Centre rather than calling the shots at the state level. Banerjee is only too aware of this mind set which she seeks to change by her development schemes like Kanyasree, Lakshmir Bhander and Sabuj Sathi to name a few.

Yet the BJP tactics of acknowledging the ethnic identity of various indigenous residents like Rajbanshis and Kochs have so far turned the tide in its favour. Apparently the much dreaded Citizenship Amendment Act is a boon to those people who settled in this area after being refugees post Partition in 1947 and thereafter and are apprehensive of losing their hearth and home a second time. The saffron camp never fails to stoke these apprehensions. The election results affirm their tactics which Trinamool has been unable to counter till date.

Mamata has taken up the North Bengal poll campaign with big seriousness and she has given strict instructions to her leaders to fight the BJP unitedly forgetting their factional differences.. TMC is better placed in South Bengal districts, that is why the TMC supremo’s big emphasis is on improving the fortunes in the North Bengal districts. (IPA Service)