All Gang Up Against Mamata Hands To Defeat Mamata

Congress stormy petrel-turned-leader of the breakaway Trinamool Congress, Mamata Banerjee, is in the midst of a crossfire between her arch rival, CPM and the Congress. Both are doing their best to defeat her in the Calcutta South constituency at any cost. The common factor of hatred may even lead to a collusion between the Congress and the CPM to frustrate her prospects by unfair means, fear the Mamata camp.

Calcutta South is a jinxed constituency for a repeat performance of a sitting M.P. Mamata broke the spell when she won the seat in 1991 and 1996 as the Congress candidate. But it will be indeed a very difficult task for her to win again in this elite-dominated constitutency that goes to the polls on February 28..

 

One of her adversaries is Prasanta Sur, former mayor of Calcutta, a former MP from this constituency and a fomer health minister of the West Bengal government. He was called back from forced retirement to give a challenge to Mamata, who has always proved to a thorn for the CPM with her loud and strident anti-communist agitations.

Saugata Roy, the Congress candidate, was a loyal ally during her long association with the Congress. But he stayed back when Mamata walked out to form the Trinamool Congress. Roy is an MLA from Alipore which falls withnin the Calcutta South Lok Sabha seat. He is considered to be one of the most articulate Congress leaders in the state with a decent academic record behind him.

Sur is confident of his victory because, as he says: I have worked in this area for 50 long years and the party organisation is also strong. I am known.

Roy, on the other hand, dismisses Mamata as a serious challenger saying that the fight will be between the Congress and the CPM.

Mamata main election campaigner, Pankaj Banerjee, who is also the Trinamool chairman, fears that both the Congress and the CPM will stoop to any extent to defeat her. The two may even join hands to intimidate those voters who her to retain the seat.

Calcutta South has a total electorate of 11,79,828 spread over seven assembly segments. The constituency has 1.5 lakh non-Bengali voters and the minority community has a strength of about 1.4 lakh. In 1996, she won with a margin of 1,03,261 votes, making a mockery of the challenge posed by the CPM, which fielded a university professor.

Muslims may side with the Congress as they feel that this party is best equipped to safeguard their interest in the wider national perspective . To that extent, the CPM may suffer but the Left party will definitely gain because of the split in the Congress camp.

A sizable portion of the electorate comes from erstwhile East Pakistan/ Bangladesh, and who had generally voted for the Left. The monopoly was broken by the Congress in the last Assembly election. Pankaj Banerjee defeated Sur, though narrowly, in the Tollygunge constitutency where Sur became a leader of the displaced persons.

The Congress is likely to be neutralised because Mamata will take a big slice of its vote bank. Trinamool Congress expects that the Mamata charisma will carry them to victory.

Another factor in their favour appears to be ally BJPs support. BJP won 5 per cent of total votes in 1996.

In the seven assemby segments, the critical area will be Sonarpur, a CPM bastion, where Mamata took a lead of about 3,000 votes in 1996 election though her party colleague in the assembly contest lost to a CPM candidate. In other six assembly constituencies, Congress won four and the CPM and the RSP, one each.

The CPM is confident of victory though with a slender margin.

But the Trinamool support base mainly comes from the teenagers who are new voters and who detest the bipolar political scene of West Bengal divided between the Congress and CPM.

Fears over free and fair poll

Pankaj Banerjee, Trinamool chairman, expressed his apprehension that the Congress-CPM combine would not allow free and fair election in the Calcutta South constituency. This has been borne out by the fact that repeated attempts have been made to frustrate the campaign by Mamata Banerjee. The latest in the series was when she was attacked by a Congress councillor at Tapsia in eastern Calcutta. Election would be a farce, he alleged.