The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
In old Calcutta, it’s Cong ‘opportunist’ vs TMC ‘graft’
Collapse and sting take centrestage in capital city; Murshidabad test for Cong-left bonding
THE WEST Bengal polls enter the crucial urban core Thursday with the third phase covering seven north Kolkata seats, besides the politically volatile regions of Murshidabad, Burdwan and Nadia. Murshidabad and Burdwan have often been described as Bengal’s killing fields because of their history of political violence through decades.
What eclipses everything else this round, however, are the Narada sting videos and the Vivekananda flyover collapse. Top Trinamool Congress leaders confessed in private that these two events have changed the complexion of the contest and introduced an element of doubt to their minds, particularly in urban pockets. None of them fears, however, that the result can be anything more drastic than a reduced vote share in urban seats.
The sting videos and the flyover have given the CPM two weapons to attack the ruling party with. The worst attacks in the past week came, however, not from the CPM but from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
“Bengal is gripped by a vicious syndicate culture which is destroying everything. The cast of characters from Saradha to Narada to the flyover collapse are all the same,” Modi said in Kolkata. A couple of days earlier, Sonia had attacked Mamata Banerjee for the first time, saying at a rally in Malda: “Mamata’s government has committed dhoka with the people. She has been unmasked now.”
Mamata has at times appeared uncharacteristically tentative in her response to these attacks, particularly as far as the sting is concerned. At one meeting, she said she would order a probe into the sting after the polls. At another, she said “Pardon me this time if you feel outraged at the revelations.”
Two of the constituencies in this round are hot seats. One is Jorasanko, where the Vivekananda flyover collapsed killing 26, injuring more than 100 and displacing several thousand residents. Even without the flyover collapse, this assembly seat is one where BJP hopes runs high. In this segment of Kolkata Uttar, the BJP had led in 2014 with 45,000 votes to the 28,500 of the Trinamool Congress, while the Congress had polled 20,600 and the Left 15,400.
All 11 seats combined in Kolkata, the BJP had a vote share of 27.29 per cent, behind the Trinamool’s 35.60 per cent but ahead of the Left’s 19.63 per cent and the Congress’s 14.45. In Jorasanko, the BJP has fielded its former state president Rahul Sinha, one of the party’s most familiar faces in Kolkata, against sitting MLA Smita Bakshi of the Trinamool Congress. The contest is triangular, with the Left-congress combine seen as strong enough to divide the opposition vote.
The other key constituency, also in north Kolkata, is Chowringhee where veteran Congress leader Somen Mitra is pitted against Nayna Bandopadhyay of the Trinamool Congress and Ritesh Tiwari of the BJP. Nayna, wife of MP Sudip Bandopadhyay, is the sitting MLA in this constituency, whose large business community and closeness to the collapsed Jorasanko flyover will keep BJP hopes ticking.
All 22 seats in Baharampur are going to polls this round along with 17 in Nadia and 16 in Burdwan. The Congress-left alliance has not worked out as smoothly in Murshidabad as state Congress president Adhir Chowdhury had hoped. In Burdwan, the communists are making a strong bid to regain some of the ground they have lost.
Murshidabad is a Muslim-dominated district that Mamata had earlier left largely to the Congress as an alliance partner. This time she has assigned this Congress bastion to Suvendu Adhikari, Trinamool Congress MP. “We have worked hard in Murshidabad. Had the Congress-left alliance not been there, the Trinamool would have had a better share of seats. Even now, we are sure to spring some surprises,” Adhikari said.
“Yes, the alliance did not work out as comprehensively on the ground as we had expected. I cannot rule out accidents in some seats,” said Adhir, wary of upsets by the TMC. FOR THREE centuries, Chowringhee has epitomised the aura of importance surrounding Calcutta. On Thursday, it’s a different Chowringhee that will go to polls. The affluence has long gone, replaced with crumbling buildings and street vendors, as Congress veteran Congress Somen Mitra takes on sitting TMC MLA Nayna Bandyopadhyay.
Recent trends would suggest Nayna’s party is better placed than Mitra’s. In 2015, the TMC won nine of the ten wards here, leaving one to the Congress. Three of the wards have a dominant Muslim population and seven have an equal distribution of Bengali residents and migrants. Nayna became MLA winning a bypoll last year.
Mitra is battling a campaign by the Opposition that brands him an opportunist. Once president of the state Congress, Mitra formed a Pragatisheel (Progressive) Indira Congress in 2008, his argument being that the Congress by allying with the Left at the Centre had lost credibility. In 2008, he was elected an MP on a TMC ticket and joined that party. Then last year, he quit as MP over alleged corruption and rejoined the Congress. Now, he has been instrumental in forging a Left-congress understanding.
“If I hadn’t left the TMC, you would have seen my face on television in scams such as Narada and Saradha,” Mitra said. “It is impossible to be in the Trinamool Congress and not be corrupt . And as far as development is concerned, where is it?”
But Nayna insisted at a rally: “People know how much work the party has done. Not just here, but everywhere. We have done what the Left couldn’t do in three decades.”
Chowringhee was where Mamata Banerjee first admitted she could have reacted differently to the Narada scam, had it not been for the polls. It is also one of the seats the BJP had listed as a success story in the Lok Sabha elections. “We had made initial inroads, particularly among the nonbengalis. But we’ve lost the momentum due to a weak party structure,” a BJP leader admitted. A rally by Rajnath Singh Monday drew hardly 100 people, prompting the leadership to call for an internal report, said sources.