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West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee are among the star campaigners of the party for the October 30 bypolls to four Assembly seats in the state, but interestingly, the names of actor-turned-MP Nusrat Jahan and former BJP leader Babul Supriyo, who recently joined the TMC camp do not feature in the list.
The BJP's list of campaigners features prominent national leaders.
The TMC list contains the names of actor MPs Dev and Mimi Chakraborty, popular singer-MLA Aditi Munshi, filmmaker-MLA Raj Chakraborty, actor-turned TMC state youth wing chief Sayani Ghosh, apart from senior leaders Subrata Mukherjee, Firhad Hakim, Sougata Roy and Arup Biswas.
Significantly, the names of Nusrat Jahan, who had actively campaigned for the party in the assembly polls held in March-April, and Supriyo, who joined the party before the just-concluded Bhabanipur bypoll and requested Mamata Banerjee to "save me from the embarrassment of campaigning against long-time BJP friend Priyanka Tibrewal", do not figure in the TMC list.
The BJP list of campaigners contains names of Union minister Smriti Irani, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sharma, MP from Bihar Giriraj Singh as heavyweights from outside the state.
The saffron party, which had roped in a number of campaigners from outside West Bengal for the Assembly polls, is equally relying on the local brigade of its state president Sukanta Majumder, national vice-president Dilip Ghosh, Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Suvendu Adhikari, Union ministers and north Bengal MPs John Barla and Nisith Pramanik, Minister-MP from the Matua community Santanu Thakur, among others.
The BJP list of campaigners also contains the party's celebrity faces -- actor-turned-Rajya Sabha MP Rupa Ganguly and actor-MP Locket Chatterjee, besides fashion designer and MLA Agnimitra Paul.