Mamata Banerjee’s five-day south Bengal visit: includes area of alleged “hunger deaths” and areas with increasing BJP support

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is on a five-day visit to the districts of south Bengal, which includes both administrative and public meetings.

This includes the forested districts of Jangalmahal area where the Trinamool has done rather poorly in the recent panchayat elections. In fact, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) support has been on the rise in Purulia area – both in terms of public support as well as in the party’s organisation strength. Under this backdrop, the CM’s visit to Jangalmahal is significant where she will conduct administrative meetings as well as address public meetings.

Her first public meeting is in Jhargram today. Recently, four persons were arrested from the district and slapped with sedition charges. Police said that they have Maoist links. Interestingly, the arrest of the four has been linked with the alleged starvation deaths of seven tribal people in the Jangal khas village of Jhargram, a tiny village with a predominant poor Shabar (tribal) population. The village is close to the Jharkhand border.

Seven persons in the village have died in the past few months, four of them in November. There are talks that this has happened due to starvation.

Human rights activists in Kolkata have said that the four persons from Kolkata who were visiting Jhargram had been arrested as some of them were researching on the alleged “hunger” deaths.

The chief minister in Kolkata, without referring to the incident, said that the poor in the state have special food schemes in Bengal. The district magistrate has denied that these were “hunger deaths”. There have been protests and rallies in Kolkata in this connection, and therefore the CM’s visit to Jangalmahal is important also under this backdrop. She will inaugurate several development projects in the Jhargram district, including a bridge, health centre, roads etc.

Banerjee will also be in Purulia, where she will hold administrative meeting and hold a special meeting with Hindi speaking community. There is a significant rise of BJP support in the district especially among the business families who hail from outside Bengal but have settled here for a few generations.

The CM will also travel to Bankura, West Burdwan before returning to Kolkata on Friday when she will attend the state cabinet meeting at Nabanna, the state administrative headquarters.