Notwithstanding the mass upheaval post RG Kar Medical College and Hospital rape and murder case the Trinamool Congress is confident of winning all the six Assembly seats up for the grab in the November 13 by-elections.

"There is no problem with the elections “the party is confident of winning all the seats,” said a senior leader and minster in the State Government. That the RG Kar started with a bang and

ended in a whimper and the way the Left forces led by the CPI(M) which was primarily behind the movement failed to capitalise on it would only help the TMC's cause, he said.

"There are people who are trying to compare the Singur and Nandigram movement with the one we saw recently stoked largely by the CPI(M) the fact that those were primarily rural movements led by a mass leader like Mamata Banerjee who was tactically and strategically far more superior than the present leaders like Meenakshi Mukherjee says it all," the TMC leader

said adding "simply they failed to carry RG Kar movement to the villages … move so the women." His views were buttressed by a former CPI(M) leader Samir Putatundu who said that strategically the doctors' movement failed because they could not realize the importance of the villages. "There were at least half a dozen cases of rape and even murder after RG Kar … mostly in villages … but instead of shifting the epicenter from RG Kar to the villages they remained

grounded in Kolkata," he said adding unlike in the past when the Mamata Banerjee successfully transferred the epicenter of the farmers' movement from Singur to Nandigram and then to Lalgarh in the recent case the doctors remained confined to Kolkata. Continuous protests by junior doctors for the last two months --- in the wake of the brutal rape and murder of a postgraduate lady doctor of RGKMCH --- compelled the TMC government to replace the Kolkata police commissioner, Director of Medical Education, and Director of Health Service, amidst mounting allegations of corruption and a lack of cooperation with doctors and protestors. But the movement tended to stumble post that despite 17-days fast unto death undertaken by 12 doctors with the Chief Minister playing waiting game for the agitators to exhaust and then surrender. TMC MP Saugato Roy too said that the RG Kar movement had failed. "It has entered a blind lane from where it can never come out … the movement has ended without any political impactremaining," he said.

Even Opposition Leader Suvendu Adhikari whose BJP had tried to control the movement in the beginning but failed too said that the "doctors made a mess … they started impressively but failed to convert it to a bigger movement." It is against this backdrop that TMC leader Kunal Ghosh once again repeated his prediction saying, "we will win all the six out of six Assembly seats … the CPI(M) tried to play mischievous games in RG Kar but they have failed … now they will end up even behind the BJP their goal to come up to the second spot will also fail." Another TMC leader and a former MLA said that though the doctors' movement impacted the party's image it failed to make inroads in the rural areas and particularly the party's minority vote base. Apparently the Muslim community that comprises about 30 percent of the voters remained spectator to the movement.

"It's true our image took some beating. But that doesn't mean our election machinery is weakened. That was intact and this movement has no impact in the village areas … they simply failed to capitalize on the women sentiments by taking the movement to the villages," the leader said. With the sitting TMC MLAs getting elected to Parliament in this year's general elections, by-elections will be conducted in six seats which are Sitai and Madarihat in Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri districts of North Bengal, Haroa and Naihati in North 24 Parganas, Taldangra in Bankura and Medinipur in West Midnapore district.

The TMC had won five out of the six seats in the 2021 Assembly elections with the BJP winning the sole seat of Madarihat. "This time round we will wrest that seat too from the BJP and the CPI(M) will remain in its "zero" position," said Ghosh.