As usual, the ruling party of West Bengal, Trinamool Congress, held its annual mega ‘Martyr’s Day’ rally in Kolkata on July 21. This rally is held to commemorate the police firing on the protest organised by the Youth Congress in 1993. For years, this rally has become an important event as it lays out the party’s strategy for one year.

With this annual event being the last one ahead of next year’s state assembly polls, this event was awaited by state’s political circles to get a glimpse of the ruling party’s election strategy. And as expected, party supremo and also state’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee charted out the party’s strategy for the upcoming assembly elections in the mega rally.

During her speech, Mamata made it clear that she is going to bank on the card of Bengali regionalism to counter the main Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Instead of playing the usual pro-Muslim card in the name of holding the flag of secularism high in the state, this time she has relied on playing the Bengali card by portraying the detention of illegal Bangladeshi migrants in the BJP-ruled states as attacks on the Bengali identity and drawing a conclusion by terming the saffron party as an “anti-Bengali party". She also tried to motivate her party workers and supporters by calling them that her struggle won’t end until and unless the BJP is removed from the Centre.

It has to be mentioned that this isn’t the first time that Mamata has invoked Bengali regionalism to gain electoral benefits. She had successfully done that in the last assembly polls, where she was able to defend her throne by........

© News18