"Jini aachhen tini aashben (The one who is in power here, will come back here)," was the response of a tea-seller just meters away from the Congress office in Bhowanipur.
A walk across Bhowanipore—one of south Kolkata's oldest localities—easily gives out its leader. Even the searing April heat of Thursday has not deterred her party workers from sitting outside local Trinamool Congress offices, planning the events for the day. There are huge posters of chief minister Mamata Banerjee all over the locality—its shops, pavements and old houses, walls are smeared in bright colors of green and orange—painting the same name.
"Jini aachhen tini aashben (The one who is in power here, will come back here)," was the response of a tea-seller just metres away from the Congress office in Bhowanipore.
Bhowanipore is Banerjee's constituency, an area she is confident of winning once again. But is that the reason why she has not yet campaigned in her own constituency?
"Didi will campaign just once in this constituency. We look after the other rallies and door to door campaigns," said Dipak Sarkar, a TMC worker in Bhowanipore, adding that Banerjee is slated to hold a rally on foot on April 24 in the constituency.
Sarkar said Banerjee does not need to campaign much Bhowanipore. "Uni toh ei parar meye (She is very much the neighbourhood girl of Bhowanipore," Sarkar emphasised.
"She stays right here. She moves about in this locality without any air or guards. On any day, you will find her catching up a conversation with locals here, asking how they are doing and if they are facing any problem," said Sarkar, stressing on Banerjee's popularity here.
Sarkar was one of the many who deflected from the Congress when TMC was formed in 1997.
Another TMC worker said, Banerjee being a resident of Bhowanipore, locals relate to her easily.
He is right. Banerjee does have support base in Bhowanipore, both in its upper middle-class residents as well as its slums. "She has made drinking water available to one and all. She has made toilets in slums and improved the roads and street lights of Bhowanipore. People can see the change," the TMC worker said.
Bhowanipur goes to polls on April 30, in which Banerjee will be battling with Congress's Deepa Dasmunsi (former minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi's wife), popularly known as Boudi (sister in law) and grand-nephew of Subhash Chandra Bose, Chandra Bose, who is representing the BJP.
Political observers, however, say despite Banerjee's popularity in Bhowanipore, Dasmunsi can get a good number of votes from the locality.
"South Kolkata still has a chunk of Congress leaders because of the dynamic leadership of Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi. This is one of the most important factors that the Congress leadership has considered while narrowing down on Deepa Das Munshi as the Congress candidate against the powerful Mamata Banerjee," said Biswajit Bhattacharya, senior journalist and political observer.
Bhattacharya emphasised that in the last general elections, Bhowanipur gave the maximum vote to BJP, which was more than 47,000.
"Looking at the arithmetic, the combined vote figure of Congress and the left in the general elections is close to what the TMC had gained. The Congress and left alliance can gain again this time, if the BJP votes get swayed towards them in the absence of a Modi wave in Bhowanipore this time," Bhattacharya said.
Moreover, the Congress in Bhowanipur is trying to play on the urban population, which had been affected by corruption charges against the TMC. Banerjee had resigned as the railway minister in 2001 to protest NDA's inaction against George Fernandes. The Congress is questioning her inaction now, after corruption charges against her party's top brass came to the fore.
"With Dasmunsi, the Congress is also taking into the account the party's gamble of 1984, when a then newbie Banerjee defeated the invincible CPM veteran Somnath Chatterjee," Bhattacharya said.
Meanwhile, the BJP, too is hopeful that their gamble with Chandra Bose will resonate with locals in Bhowanipore, in the backdrop of their good vote share from the locality in 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
"The response has been very good in our campaigns. In our campaigns in Bhowanipore, we found that people have lost hope on politicians. And why wouldn't they? The people in Bhowanipore still live in dismal conditions," Bose told dna, adding that all of BJP's posters in the locality have been torn off by TMC workers.
Attacking the Congress for being the most communal party and being responsible for the partition of the country post independence, Bose said he joined BJP so that he can take forward Subhash Chandra Bose's ideas ahead, from which even the All India Forward Bloc has deviated.
"Subhash Chandra was a pragmatic leader. That is what the state needs," Bose said, adding that even though he is a newcomer, it was a deliberate decision to fight the toughest constituency (Bhowanipore is all about Mamata Banerjee, reveal locals of her constituency.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
 "graffiti")
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}