KOLKATA: Getting a foothold in Mamata Banerjee’s home turf isn’t easy. And, BJP candidate from Bhawanipore, Chandra Bose, seems to be learning this the hard way. Chandra – a grandnephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose who was at the forefront of the declassification campaign – has been desperately searching for a space to set up an election office at the constituency but has failed to find one. He alleged house owners in the area are scared to rent out space to him fearing a Trinamool reprisal.
Forced to operate from a one-room BJP zonal office at 22 B Harish Mukherjee Road, Bose believes this is unfair and shows how Trinamool has been terrorizing locals. “We need a slightly bigger space to run the election campaign. The existing one is a small, cramped room which can’t accommodate more than 4-5 people. Also, it is used for storing our campaign material – festoons, posters and banners. This leaves barely any space for us to sit and talk,” said Bose.
But every time Bose or Nitin Patel, president of BJP’s Bhawanipore mandal who is serving as his campaign manager, approaches landlords for a rented space, they are turned down. “We are being told that local Trinamool leaders won’t like it and they will be pulled up after the elections. They say once we leave, they will be hauled up. This is a strange situation and a thing like this is not acceptable in a democracy,” said Bose.
Before setting off on a campaign march on Tuesday evening, Bose and his party workers had a tough time chalking out plans and coordinating the roadshow from the tiny room. “You can see how difficult it is to even sit in this room. The ruling party has been flexing its muscles unfairly to deny us the chance to take them on,” the BJP candidate said.
Bose also took to social media to claim that it’s not only BJP, other opposition parties, too, are being denied office space in the constituency.
[Source:- The Times Of India]
