Swapan Dasgupta, former Rajya Sabha member journalist and the BJP candidate from south Kolkata's Rash Behari, is emphatic that the assembly election in Bengal is not about fish or meat or any other dietary preferences. Instead, it is about the ongoing corruption, bribery, law and order and the lack of development that the state has been mired in.
Speaking to NDTV's CEO and Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal in "Walk the Talk", Dasgupta also expressed confidence that anti-incumbency is bubbling across the state and will work in favour of the BJP.
Asked whether he thought it was possible that the party would win in this bastion of Trinamool Congress, the 70-year-old said the BJP only lacks in the "necessary organisational muscle, the organisational penetration".
"But after 15 years, there is mounting public dis-satisfaction and we have emerged as the only real alternative (to the Trinamool Congress), not the Left or the Congress. Only the BJP," he added.
Rashbehari, formed in the delimitation exercise of 2011, has been a Trinamool bastion. Before the delimitation, it was represented by Trinamool's four-time MLA Sovandeb Chattopadhyay.
Now, Debasish Kumar, the party's sitting MLA, is hoping for another term. In 2021, Kumar had won the seat with 21,000-vote margin against the BJP candidate.
Asked what is different between this time and the last, Dasgupta said the BJP has learnt from the past and has tweaked its approach, depending on local, known faces and keeping its campaign to the grassroot level.
Earlier today, the candidate posted his manifesto on X -- a lengthy document that promised to revive the Kalighat temple and the Adi Ganga river flowing past.
The "pilgrim facilities must be upgraded to match Kashi-Kamakhya-Puri standards, and the area must become cleaner, safer, mafia-free and welcoming for devotees and residents," read one of his posts on X, formerly Twitter.
His other promises included safeguarding the city's lake, the Rabindra Sarovar, and "create Bengal's cafe and culture district".
Asked if the BJP could become the choice of Kolkata's "Bhadralok", Dasgupta laughed it off. Even the founder of Jan Sangh and the ideologue of the BJP Shyama Prasad Mookerjee "was a bhadralok", he pointed out.
Regarding the biggest talking point in this election, the voter list revision that has the ruling Trinamool Congress seeing red, Dasgupta said it was a fallout of the Election Commission trying to level the playing field.
"Anybody with even a nodding familiarity with West Bengal will tell you that elections in West Bengal used to have a dynamism of its own, a logic of its own, which is very different from what we know as normal elections," Dasgupta said.
It is only in West Bengal that "dead people vote... between four and five in the evening," he pointed out.
"Now that is a distortion which has been removed. And I think it's so glad that it's been removed. Because it makes it a level playing field for people. Actual voters vote, nobody has any problem," he added.
