West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said her party, All India Trinamool Congress (TMC), will field 41 per cent female candidates in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.
"Other parties are talking about 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament, but we have reserved 41 per cent seats for women," said Banerjee, announcing the names of 42 candidates of her party for that many Lok Sabha seats from the state.
Mamata said since the polling process in Bengal is spread over two and a half months in seven phases, she will get enough time to travel to different places for campaigning and she might also visit Varanasi where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in the fray.
"I will go to Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Andaman and I am even interested in going to Varanasi if Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav want me to go and campaign there, although we are not contesting from there," Mamata said.
Tasting success in earlier elections fielding filmstars, she has continued to do so this time as well. While sitting MPs and filmstars Deepak Adhikary (Dev), Moon Moon Sen and Satabdi Roy have been pitched again, two new faces from Bengali film industry — Mimi Chakraborty and Nusrat Jahan — have been pitched from Jadavpur and Basirhat constituencies.
Before she began reading out the list of candidates, Mamata said some of the sitting MPs have not been given party tickets this time. They include Sugata Bose, who Mamata said, was having trouble to get permission from Harvard University to contest the polls, filmstar turned politician Sandhya Roy who was unable to do extensive travelling, Uma Soren, who also wanted to do party work has decided not to contest, Idris Ali who would be contesting as an Assembly candidate for the party in the forthcoming by-election at Uluberia. While Mamata did not say anything about party MP Tapas Paul from Krishnanagar from where party MLA Mahua Moitra has been pitched, the biggest surprise was Subrata Bakshi who is the present MP from Kolkata Dakshin constituency. "Bakshi told me that this year the election is a crucial one and instead of all the senior party leaders contesting, some should be looking after the overall work of the party which he intends to do and we have decided to pitch Mala Roy from there," Mamata said.
