Architect of BJP’s Tripura win is now in Bengal to wrest Mamata’s Kolkata bastions

 The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has dispatched the architect of its 2018 Tripura victory to Kolkata, as it looks to tap West Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats to make up for losses expected from the Hindi heartland. His brief: To take on Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.
Sunil Deodhar, a former RSS pracharak from Maharashtra, was credited with helping the BJP form its maiden government in Tripura, unseating a Left government that had held office for 25 years.
Deodhar has been moved to Kolkata from Andhra Pradesh, where he serves as the BJP’s state co-in-charge. The Lok Sabha and assembly elections for Andhra Pradesh, where the BJP was in alliance with the TDP until last year, was concluded last month.
Elections to Bengal, where polling is often marked by violence, are being held in all the seven phases, four of which have already taken place.
Deodhar has been given charge of nine seats that are going to the polls in the last phase, and he has specifically been asked to focus on three: North Kolkata, South Kolkata and Jadavpur, all of which were won by the Trinamool Congress in 2014.
According to sources, these are the seats where the Trinamool still has an edge. The plan is to start building a framework the party can capitalise on in the assembly elections two years down the line.

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