Nine days after Union home minister Amit Shah’s road-show in Visva Bharati University, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, on Tuesday led a mammoth show of strength at almost the same place.
Though it is difficult to compare the size of two such exercises political observers are of the view that by the latest muscle flexing the Trinamool Congress chief had to much extent succeeded in cancelling out the impact created after Amit Shah’s two-day visit to West Bengal on Dec 19-20.
On the first day of his trip, Amit Shah addressed a rally in East Midnapore where more than a dozen elected representatives of different parties joined the BJP. On Dec 20 the BJP leader held a road-show in Bolpur.
Surprisingly for the BJP the folk singer Basudeb Das Baul, in whose home Amit Shah took food in his last trip, was present at Mamata’s Dec 29 rally. He made it clear that he supports Didi.
While the BJP reportedly brought a large number of people from neighbouring state, Jharkhand, in the TMC road-show a large number of women too took part.
Political analysts are of the view that the massive turn-out at Dec 29 rally has forced many people to change their opinion about Mamata. She can in no way be dismissed as non-entity.
Speaking after the four-kilometre long march, Mamata ridiculed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s beard and said those who had been opposing Mahatma Gandhi are now posing as champions of Rabindranath Tagore.
