Lok Sabha elections 2019: Mamata woos Kurmi voters in Jamshedpur with Mahato pick

In an effort to encash her popularity beyond

West Bengal

and cement her place as a national leader, All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) president Mamata Banerjee has fielded three candidates in

Jharkhand

. TMC has decided to nominate Anjana

Mahato

from

Jamshedpur

seat, Sanjay Kumar Pandey from Ranchi and Mondol Hansda from

Rajmahal

.

Soon after Mamata’s announcement of fielding three candidates and her promising that the list would be bigger in the days to come, she received a jolt when her party's Jharkhand in charge and ‘bahubali neta’ and MLA from Bhatpara (West Bengal) Arjun Singh deserted her camp and joined BJP.

Angered after being ignored for the Barrackpore seat, Singh left the party.

Meanwhile, talking about the prospects of TMC in Jharkhand, poll pundits say the party will secure votes lesser than NOTA and after Arjun Singh's resignation will make the situation worse. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, 15,629 NOTA votes were cast in the Jamshedpur constituency.

On the other hand, trying to cash in on the

kurmi

votes (2.5 lakh of 16 lakh voters) Mamata played her caste cards safe in Jamshedpur seat by fielding Anjana Mahato, who is from the same community. Incidentally, Kurmis have always played a major role in deciding the fate of Jamshedpur candidates since the 1989 general glections, when Shailendra Mahato from the community won the seat on a JMM ticket.

Sources said Anjana is a professor in the law department of Bankura University in West Bengal and, interestingly, is the wife of Srikant Mahato, the TMC MLA from Salboni in West Midnapore. Knowing that she has to get rid of her outsider tag, Anjana expressed confidence that her relatives staying in

East Singhbhum district

will play an active role in wooing the voters in her favour.

Meanwhile, a section of the Bengali population in the Steel City are angry with Mamata's selection of candidate. They feel someone from the state should have been given a chance as Jharkhand has a huge Bengali population — at one time, Jamshedpur (west and east assembly segments) had 40% Bengali population. Anjana expressed confidence that Mamata’s popular schemes in Bengal would be implemented in Jharkhand once Federal Front (third front) is elected to power.