Team News Riveting
Kolkata, February 20
Baffled with the aggressive campaign of the BJP in Bengal, Trinamool Congress (TMC) would play the same card as its strategist Prashant Kishore had suggested in Bihar—insider versus outsider.
The Trinamool Congress on Saturday launched its slogan for the upcoming assembly elections — ‘Bangla Nijer Meyekei Chaye’, portraying Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as the daughter of Bengal and kicking off shrill insider vs outsider debate.
The slogan, which translates to ‘Bengal wants its own daughter’, with Mamata’s photo was put up on hoardings across Kolkata. “The people of the state want their own daughter who has been by their side for the last several years as their chief minister. We don’t want outsiders to call the shots in Bengal,” TMC secretary-general Partha Chatterjee said.
The Trinamool Congress is engaged in a bitter political fight with the BJP, pitching the opposition party’s leaders as outsiders who are on “election tourism” to the state.
State Panchayat Minister Subrata Mukherjee said that while other parties are struggling to find a chief ministerial face, the Trinamool Congress has Mamata who knows the pulse of the people of Bengal. Mukherjee said she knows how to protect the women.
TMC had been going with catchy slogans in the electioneering. The party’s slogan of ‘Bodla Noy Bodol Chai’, meaning ‘don’t want revenge but change’, ahead of the 2011 polls turned out to be crucial in reaching out to the masses who toppled the 34 years of Left rule in Bengal.
The slogan of ‘Chup Chap Fuley Chap’ (vote for TMC in silence) during the Left rule is also considered iconic.
However, ‘Ma, Mati, Manush’ — the slogan Banerjee gave during the land agitation of the mid-2000s became the ideology of the party, helping it win rural Bengal along with the urban areas, election after election.
