Karat, Yechury court non-Bengali voters in Kolkata

The ruling CPI(M) in West Bengal has engaged its senior leaders from other states to mop up voters. On Saturday, the party general secretary Prakash Karat campaigned among the Malayali, Tamil and Gujarati voters in Kolkata.

While interacting with non-Bengali communities in the Kolkata South constituency, Karat talked about the “growing possibility of a Third Front government at the Centre”. He also stressed the need for formulating a common minimum programme acceptable to all these divergent political forces.

Later, he addressed a rally at Kidderpore, a predominantly Muslim area under the Kolkata South Lok Sabha constituency where Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee will contest the fifth and last round of Lok Sabha elections on May 13. There are around 100,000 non-Bengali voters in Kolkata South.

According to political circles in the area, Banerjee secured a good number of votes from the Tamil and Gujarati communities on previous occasions. But Malayalis by and large stood by the Left. Over a period, the Left started cultivating these non-Bengali voters and won a number of them to its side.

The most visible change in the voting pattern of the city’s non-Bengali communities have taken place among the Marwaris. The Marwari realtors became so cozy with the Left Front government that some of the prominent businessmen like Sisir Bajoria actively campaigned in favour of CPI(M) candidates. The support they extended to Mohammad Salim, the CPI(M) candidate in the Kolkata North constituency, resulted in a big way where the streets were flooded with colorful flex hoardings bearing the smiling face of Salim. When his attention was drawn to this, CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose admitted today that this format of campaigning with the candidate’s portrait is against the norms of their party. “The party does not approve of that, but some of the friends of Salim have done that. I don’t want to comment on this further.”

Interestingly, nothing was done to remove those hoardings, despite a directive from the party headquarters.

If Karat was unleashed on the non-Bengali voters of South Kolkata, then his wife and CPI(M) politburo member Brinda Karat was used to woo the city’s urban middle-class voters. Sitaram Yechury, another CPI(M) politburo member, came to Kolkata for two days in the last leg of elections and campaigned among urban voters.

While the party engaged it three senior party leaders to woo the cosmopolitan voters, it did not neglect the rural electorate. Manik Sarkar, the chief minister of Tripura and a member of the party politburo, has been campaigning in the rural areas. According to CPI(M) state committee sources, Sarkar is busy campaigning among the rural voters in North and South 24 Parganas.

On May 13, polling will be held in 11 constituencies in and around Kolkata, where some of the heavyweights from both the CPI(M) and Trinamool are in the fray. While Mamata Banerjee is contesting from her Kolkata South seat, her party candidates — Sudip Banerjee and Sougata Roy — are contesting from Kolkata North and Dum Dum, respectively.

From the CPI(M) camp, Sujan Chakravarty is fighting to retain his Jadavpur seat against a new entrant — Trinamool’s Kabir Suman — his comrade Shamik Lahiri will try to defend his Daimond Harbour seat against a massive onslaught lancuhed by veteran politican and Trinamool Congress candidate Somen Mitra.

While the Left has mobilised its senior leaders to make a serious dent in the Trinamool vote bank, the Opposition party looks a bit disarrayed as the joint campaign by Banerjee and Congress president Sonia Gandhi was cancelled recently.