Mamata reaches out to people herself in Howrah road show

Howrah: On any given day chief minister Mamata Banerjee would have completed her pre-poll walkathons in her usual style - walking in brisk pace with hands folded and a smile on her face. On Sunday, people saw a different Mamata as she walked the 9.5 kilometre-stretch on Howrah's G T Road. The hour-and-eleven-minute-long walk was punctuated by several short stops in which she reached out to people and spoke to them directly. "Are you happy with the work done in the last few years? To work more, will you give me your votes? There is a slander campaign against us, will you pay heed to them? Will you give me your vote?" she told the voters in Howrah on Sunday.Hit by the controversial Narada sting ahead of the 2016 assembly polls, Mamata took the posers to the people directly. In the fag-end of her campaign, when she was presented a flower bouquet by the Howrah Trade Development Zone president and party councillor Shailesh Rai, she asked the traders directly: "What do you want? Do you have any problem? Don't say yes to everything, if you have any problem tell me now. I am here." Gauging the seriousness of her tone, Rai and Howrah mayor Rathin Chakraborty nudged the traders to speak up. It only evoked a feeble response - "Didi things are fine. We would need this (cooperation) more."If the spontaneity was missing, it was more or less made up by Mamata by her outreach efforts.In the run-up to the 2011 assembly election, a similar road show had evoked never-before-seen moments in Howrah. Women blowing conch shells, flower petals being showered on her and people from all hues joining Mamata in her campaign. Five years later, in 2016, the road show lacked that enthusiasm and resembled a regimented party affair. Mamata was showered with flower petals only at one place that too by a party flag-bearer. The walkathon which began in Shalimar's Betaitola at 4:11 pm, winded up at Salkia's Sammilani Park at 5:22 pm. It saw Mamata cutting across four assembly segments - Howrah (South), Shibpur, Howrah (Central) and Howrah (North). She was accompanied by the Howrah party heavyweights and ministers Arup Ray and Rajeev Banerjee, mayor Chakraborty, and party candidates Vaishali Dalmiya, Laxmi Ratan Shukla and Borjomohan Majumdar. The party's Howrah observer and state minister Firad Hakim, the party's national secretary Subrata Bakshi and minister Aroop Biswas were also with her.Mamata didn't make any public speech. When she winded up her walk near Howrah's Pilkhana, she stepped on to a small dais (ostensibly erected to canvas support for her party candidate, Shukla) Mamata made a strong pitch for her development work. She derided the smear campaign and said the focus should be back on development. A few minutes, later, she stepped down.The chief minister's Howrah rally comes in the backdrop of some intense factionalism within party ranks and gradual inroads being made by the opposition (read CPM) in terms of vote-share. In the 2014 Lok Sabha poll, the party had anxiously witnessed its 2011 assembly leads being reversed in some key assembly segments, including Howrah (South). The road show on Sunday, incidentally, started from Howrah (South) too.Meanwhile, in another road show on Monday, the chief minister will walk from Ballygunj Phanri to Jadubabur Bazar . The road show will start from 4pm.