Win or lose BJP to decide Bhowanipore fate

Kolkata: Amid the reams of paper being studied meticulously at the Trinamool party (back) office on Harish Mukherjee Road, are Bhowanipore's booth-wise voters and the 2015 Kolkata Municipal Corporation poll results.
Forget Amit Shah's "not-150-seats-but-only-Bhowanipore pitch". Thursday brought all BJP's star campaigners to Bhowanipore. Roopa Ganguly's 8am road show, Babul Supriyo's last-minute fusilade and Locket Chatterjee's 5pm road show appeared to be some slog-over pinch hitting by the BJP in this prestige fight.
If fielding Chandra Bose, Netaji's grand-nephew, was BJP's first stunner, the second was its rather belated pitch to pep up his campaign with hyperbole.Given BJP's vote-share and its vote-bank (rough estimates peg the non-Bengali electorate here at around 67,000), this should have rattled the ruling Trinamool. Ironically it is far from it. Trinamool's tit-for-tat retorts have been replaced by a quiet acceptance.
It's not BJP leaders but the numbers their party polled a year back that bothers Trinamool's poll managers here.
Their argument here is somewhat like this. A more spirited BJP campaign will help it consolidate its vote. And this is formidable here. For, the party that polled only 5,078 votes in 2011, sped to pole position in 2014 Lok Sabha poll, clinching 47,465 votes - or 34.19% of the 1.38-lakh votes polled. A year later, in the KMC election, Trinamool reclaimed the lead, but BJP still got a "disturbing" 34,932 votes.
In the May 2014 to April 2015 phase, Trinamool made up its losses by gaining over 10,000 votes. CPM too gained 5000 votes. But BJP lost 12,000 votes; Congress another 10,000. Going by a booth-wise analysis, Trinamool seemed to have weaned away most of the Congress votes, not BJP. CPM gained the most from the BJP slump.
BJP is a dominant factor in Bhowanipore. "The alliance is inconsequential, it is a fight between BJP and Trinamool here," says Bose. In half of Bhowanipore's eight KMC wards (63, 70, 72 and 74), the vote difference between Trinamool and Congress is only 1,000. In these wards, CPM's vote share is insignificant. A BJP slump is what CPM wishes for to make a dent in these parts.
And this perhaps is the only worry for Trinamool poll managers. According to them, BJP needs to do well here for Trinamool to do better.
Deepa Das Munshi has been leading a high-pitched campaign here. "Forget all calculations," she says, "There are 11 players in the fray; only Deepa Das Munshi will score the winning goal."
To do that, she looks to the CPM flagbearers. The symbolism of getting ward 77 councilor Shamima Rehman Khan to endorse her candidature has a reason - this is the only Bhowanipore ward where the Left holds complete sway. Arithmetically, the Left-Congress alliance still lags BJP by 2,500 votes.
"CPM hasn't won Bhowanipore ever. In 1969, CPM's Sadhan Gupta won the erstwhile Kalighat seat. They won it again in 1977. From 1952 to 1967, Bhowanipore was with Congress, twice won by former CM Sidhartha Shankar Ray. When Bhowanipore was formed after delimitation in 2011, Trinamool hasn't lost here," says a Trinamool veteran.