Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC), has chosen popular actors as candidates for the 2019 General Elections. Again. However, this time the CM of West Bengal has chosen from the younger crop of actors. Mimi Chakraborty, Nusrat Jahaan & Dev (Deepak Adhikari) have been chosen to contest from Jadavpur, Basirhat and Birbhum respectively.
It was but obvious that the announcement would invite its fair share of criticism. Many criticised the choice of actors who have no political experience, over seasoned politicians. But both Jahan and Chakraborty were at receiving end of sexist trolls, who had no problem sharing glamorous pictures of both female actors with condescending captions borrowed from WhatsApp forwards.
Mimi Chakraborty for a TMC candidate?
What is Mamata smoking? Last time I checked, Politics in India was not supposed to be a cluster of B grade actresses standing for elections. What the fuck?
— ShubhangiChakravarty (@NyxAmenda) March 13, 2019
Null headed coconut Mimi Chakraborty gets Trinamool Congress ticket from Jadavpur. Under Mamata, Bengali intellectualism hits rock bottom going beyond exoneration
— Debarati (@debarati_m) March 12, 2019
A common trait among most of these accounts trolling both the female actors, is that they support the BJP, a party that’s desperately trying to gain a foothold in Mamata-land. And it’s understandable why many wouldn’t agree with their selection as political candidates, but what these tweets are propagating is a person’s narrow world view, where women only exist to ‘introduce’ the man running for election.
Same Mimi Chakraborty (as above) without makeup
Modi Ji was right.. #MahaMilavat
– Ravi Kant
In 2019 Election #CongressCollapse in whole India, but @MamataOfficial became totally mental,Meet Her TMC MP Candidate: 4m Jadavpur: Mimi Chakraborty; 4m Basirhat- Nusrat Jahan; 4m Krishnanagar – Mahua Moitra
IPL Hai or Lok Sabha Election pic.twitter.com/UA1TdrpJqK
– BJP4Bengal (@SupportBJP4WB) March 12, 2019
Mimi Chakraborty is the candidate of TMC from JAdavpur seat. By the way, there is enough intellectual in our parliament, now, nation need such beauty in the apex stage of democracy, so that no one can make meme with the comparison of pakistani beautiful lawmakers with indian.#tmc pic.twitter.com/PGOkFcTy1I
— kundan kumar (@kundanex) March 12, 2019
TMC has decided to field Bengali Film stars Nusrat Jahan & Mimi Chakraborty from Bashirhat & Jadavpur in #LokSabhaElections2019 . Time for Shashi Tharoor to rejoice. Two Apples are on the way to Parliament. _____ pic.twitter.com/qPnb2F9GE5
— ~______ ~______ (@romi_2019) March 13, 2019
Iska naam Mimi Chakraborty hai. Bengali Actress (famous for breakup’s than her movies)___
— Sambit Priyadarsi (@Sambit_Speaks) March 12, 2019
Chakraborty and Jahan are two of the five Tollywood candidates in TMC’s list of contestants for the 2019 General Elections. It’s interesting to see how many allies TMC has made within the Kolkata film industry, especially at a time when the government participated in removing a film from the screens of West Bengal. And while all this happened, the most popular stars chose to stay mum during the whole issue.
Among the blockbuster clashes taking place in Kolkata, veteran actor Moon Moon Sen will take on BJP’s Babul Supriyo in Asansol. Actor Shatabdi Roy will be replacing co-star and former TMC candidate, Tapas Pal, because of the latter’s failing health. Roy will be contesting from Birbhum, a constituency where she has already been elected twice since 2009.
