Mamata Banerjee's three-day north trip begins from Monday

A senior Trinamul functionary in Alipurduar said after the Assembly polls, this is chief minister's first visit in the district

Parade Ground in Alipurduar on Saturday, where chief minister Mamata Banerjee is scheduled to hold a public meeting on Tuesday.: Anirban Choudhury

Avijit Sinha   |   TT  |  Siliguri   |    06.06.22  : Chief minister Mamata Banerjee will arrive in north Bengal on Monday for a three-day visit to attend events lined up in Alipurduar district.

“On Tuesday, she will attend a public meeting of Trinamul workers at Parade Ground in Alipurduar town and the next day (Wednesday) be present at a mass marriage of tribal couples at a venue in Kalchini block of the district. She will return to Calcutta on the same day,” said a source.

Alipurduar, the 20th district of Bengal that was created back in 2014 by the Mamata Banerjee government, has a predominance of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes who comprise around 80 per cent of the population.

Over the past few weeks, Mamata has been focusing on the tribal population of different districts of Bengal.

She has visited some tribal-dominated districts like Jhargram, Bankura, Purulia and West Midnapore, held administrative review meetings and passed specific instructions for socio-economic uplift of tribal people which underscored that pending infrastructure work should be expedited.

Political analysts pointed out that in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and last year’s Assembly elections, the saffron camp had managed to make inroads in several tribal strongholds.

“A number of BJP MPs and MLAs got elected from tribal belts. As the panchayat elections will be held next year, it seems that the chief minister intends to revive Trinamul’s support base in tribal belts. In north Bengal, she has chosen Alipurduar, a district where lakhs of tribal people live in tea estates and forest villages,” said an analyst.

Also, Alipurduar is one of the three districts in north Bengal, the other two being Darjeeling and Kalimpong, where Trinamul doesn’t have a single MLA.

A senior Trinamul functionary in Alipurduar said after the Assembly polls, this is Mamata’s first visit in the district.

“The BJP might have won MLA and MP seats but performance of these elected representatives have remained miserable. On the other hand, the state government has come up with a series of social schemes and people are getting regular benefits from them. This is where, we believe, we can revive our support. All of us are keenly waiting for the chief minister’s instructions,” the party leader said.

Her presence at a mass marriage event of tribal couples on Wednesday is also being seen as an effort to reach out to the indigenous population.

Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, a frontal outfit of the RSS that works in tribal belts, also hosts such mass marriages every year.

Courtesy & sour e