Mamata Banerjee to begin 2016 assembly poll campaign from March first week

KOLKATA: Bengal chief minister and Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee will start campaigning for the 2016 assembly election from the first week of March.
The CM on Saturday held a meeting with leaders of South 24-Parganas district at her Harish Chatterjee Street residence, where it was decided that the Trinamool Congress will begin an aggressive house-to-house campaign after the party’s “general council” meeting at Trinamool Bhavan on E M Bypass on February 12.
“The CM will start her own campaign from March, soon after the Union Budget ends,” said an aide. But then, Mamata, has been on a feigned campaigning all along, ever since she wrested the state from the 34-year-old Communist rule in May 2011. The Trinamool Congress has won elections after elections ever since, despite the looming Saradha scam, in which one of her ministers, Madan Mitra, is still in custody.
On Saturday, Mamata is believed to have told party-men from South 24-Parganas that she was already home, thanks to her government’s performance and all the development projects undertaken by it. Therefore, she said, there was no point “wasting” time over alliance talks, either for her own party or the tie-up strategies taken up by the Opposition.
The CM has been painting the state red in the name of administrative meetings over the part many months, soon after the municipal polls were wrapped up in May, last year.
But the chief minister – now completely on the “Bidhansabha poll mode” with election date announcement due in February end – will not need to call her upcoming district tours “administrative visits” any more.