A middle-aged man stopped Rudranil Ghosh, the BJP’s Bhowanipore candidate, during a door-to-door campaign in Surjya Sen Colony behind Presidency Correctional Home on Friday afternoon.

“Gas er daam, tel er daam-er ki hobe? Vote hoye gele to dekha korte gele appointment lagbe (What about the price of gas, the price of fuel? Once the vote is over, we will need an appointment to meet you),” the 54-year-old man told Ghosh, who switched sides from the Trinamul Congress to the BJP just before the Assembly polls.

When Ghosh was gone, the same man, and several other residents of the colony, told this newspaper that the area had seen a lot of improvement in terms of roads and drainage but they were fed up with the high-handedness of local Trinamul leaders.

“From a hospital admission to a government grant, you need the party’s approval for everything. We respect Mamata Banerjee, but her party’s men are no different from the CPM when it ruled the state,” said a senior citizen.

Mamata is the sitting MLA of Bhowanipore but this time she has contested from Nandigram against her former party colleague, Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP.

Trinamul has fielded veteran leader Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay from Bhowanipore, which votes on April 26. Md. Shadab Khan of the Congress is the Sanjukta Morcha candidate from the seat.

Bhowanipore is decked out in Trinamul flags, festoons, posters and banners. At least in terms of campaign paraphernalia, the BJP is no match to the ruling party.

Trinamul candidate Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay

But while criss-crossing the constituency, this newspaper encountered a mixed bag of responses.

Discontent against the ruling party was visible at multiple pockets. On Harish Mukherjee Road, a woman pointed towards Abhishek Banerjee’s residence, around 50 metres away. “Amar tali-r bari aki roye gelo, didir moto. Odike prasad toiri hoye gelo (My tiled-roof house remains what it was, like Didi’s. There, a palace has come up),” said the woman.

The third-generation owner of a 110-year-old shop in Jadubabur Bazar that sells school uniforms and kurta-pyjamas was on the other side of the spectrum.

“Bhowanipore had been a Congress bastion even at the peak of the Left rule. After Mamata’s emergence, old Congress supporters sided with her because she could fight the CPM. That bond with Mamata has been intact. It does not matter who is fighting from Bhowanipore. This will remain Mamata’s seat. The BJP will come a distant second,” said the 66-year-old man.

The Trinamul support base comprises a large section of the old Bengali residents of Bhowanipore, who were Congress loyalists before shifting allegiance to Mamata.

Bhowanipore has over two lakh voters. Apart from Bengalis, there are Gujaratis, Marwaris and Punjabis.

The BJP had in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls got a lead of 185 votes over Trinamul in the Bhowanipore Assembly segment, which falls under the Calcutta South parliamentary seat.

Sanjukta Morcha candidate Md. Shadab Khan

In the 2016 Assembly elections, Mamata got around 66,000 votes, or a 48 per cent vote share, and won the seat. The Congress’s Deepa Das Munshi came second, getting around 40,000 votes, which translated to a 29 per cent vote share.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Trinamul’s Mala Roy led from the Bhowanipore segment, but only by some 3,000 votes.

“We are eyeing the Gujarati and Marwari communities, which traditionally vote for the BJP. We also expect the bulk of the lower-middle class votes,” said a BJP leader.

A trader in Beltala, whose family traces its roots to Gujarat, said Narendra Modi had made “India proud on the global stage (desh ka naam roshan kiya)”, without delving into the specifics.

But around a kilometre away, the mood outside Balwant Singh dhaba, a popular eatery on Harish Mukherjee Road, was different.

“No educated person will vote for the BJP and Modi,” said Maninder Singh, 30, who had come for a cup of tea. Calling Modi an “absolute failure” in handling the Covid-19 crisis, he said all the BJP was interested in was “dividing the country along religious lines”.

“Uski ulti ginti yahaan se chaalu ho gayi hai (The countdown to Modi’s downfall has started from Bengal),” he said. “After how he has handled the farmers’ agitation, no Punjabi is going to vote for Modi.”

Ghosh, the BJP candidate, sounded upbeat. “The queen has left her kingdom because she had sensed defeat,” he said, referring to Mamata’s choice to contest from Nandigram. “There was a slender margin in the Lok Sabha. This time, there is a wind of change in favour of Modiji, despite Trinamul’s desperate attempts to stop us from campaigning. I am confident of winning.”

His opponent, Trinamul’s Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, was at a makeshift chamber on the ground floor of his Rupnarayan Nandan Lane home when this reporter met him. Chattopadhyay, the minister of power in the outgoing state cabinet, had been down with Covid-19 in the middle of the campaign season but has since recovered.

He is a ninth generation resident of Bhowanipore but is better known as the MLA from Rashbehari.

“It is a matter of pride that Mamata has chosen me from Bhowanipore. This is the first time I will vote for myself,” he said with a smile.

“I started my political career in 1962. But even before Bhowanipore residents knew me as a politician, they knew me as a boxer and social worker,” he said. The boxing club where Chattopadhyay trained stands a stone’s throw from his house.

“Roads, drainage, hospitals, everything has seen remarkable development in Bhowanipore. Our work and Mamata Banerjee’s pull are more than enough for a smooth victory,” he said.