Clad in white, as Mukherjee came out of his house in Raghunathgunj, he was surrounded by hundreds of local residents. Incidentally, the house he has rented for the purpose of election campaign belongs to a local CPI(M) leader. As his convoy slowly moved through the narrow lanes of Kanupur, Sadekpur, Chandi Chowk villages, security personnel found it hard controlling the crowd.

“The higher secondary examination is going on. So, I cannot use microphones. I want to tell you that I want to carry on the development work and need your blessings for that. There is a problem of erosion by Padma River. I have made the Centre take it up, without waiting for the state Government which was dilly-dallying on the issue.

Mukherjee changed his scheduled route at least five times to reach out to more voters and visit areas like Noorpur and Fatullapur, bordering Bangladesh. Out of the seven Assembly segments under his parliamentary constituency, the Congress has only one. The CPI(M) has four and the RSP two.

Despite his long political career, Mukherjee had the first taste of electoral victory from Jangipur in the last parliamentary polls in 2004. He hinted that the second-term could well be his last.

“You had blessed me last time and sent me to Delhi. I have tried to develop the area and work for you. My party has chosen me to fight from this seat again and I ask for your blessings this time too. I have been part of four governments at the Centre, I have been a parliamentarian for 38 years. I am getting old. This may be my last election. I do not know whether I will be able to contest polls any more,” said Mukherjee in a public rally in Gopalnagar Dhanmath under Suti-I block in the evening.Taking a dig at the Third Front he said, “Our prime minister is Manmohan Singh. If we form the government, he will be our PM. But in the Third Front there are numerous leaders. Jayalalithaa says she will be the prime minister, Mayawati says she will be the prime minister. Why don’t they have musical chairs and all these leaders can take turns to become the PM — one in the morning, the other in the evening. Only the Congress can run a coalition government,” he said.

“We usually vote for the CPI(M), but not when Pranab babu is contesting. We wanted a provident fund office for bidi workers here and he opened one for us,” said Rubina Noor, a bidi worker from the area. According to government estimates, there are 600,000 bidi workers in Jangipur constituency.

In the last polls, Mukherjee had defeated CPI(M) candidate Abul Hasnat Khan by 37,782 votes. Nripen Chakraborty, CPI(M)’s district secretary, said, “Pranab’s political stature is enormous. We have pitted Mriganka Bhattacharya, our popular leader, against him. Even if we lose, we will put up a stiff fight.”