Alliance Defiance
It made Mamata Banerjee seethe and the Left Front smile. It made the Congress High Command throw up its arms in surrender. But Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury just refused to relent. In the biggest blow to the Congress-Trinamool Congress alliance, during the second phase of elections in West Bengal which took place on April 23 in the three districts of Nadia, Murshidabad and Birbhum, Chowdhury, who is also the Murshidabad district Congress head, fielded four candidates who would not only contest the Left but also TMC. Insisting that his district was a traditionally strong Congress base where TMC had no presence whatsoever, he refused to accept or acknowledge the fielding of TMC candidates in his area. In fact, so annoyed was Chowdhury with the seat-sharing arrangement with TMC which left the Congress with only 64 seats from which to contest the elections, that he had reportedly even suggested to Sonia Gandhi that Congress should fight the elections in the state alone. When that didn’t happen he simply went ahead and put up his own candidates ignoring both words of wisdom as well as warnings of disciplinary action. Even the possibility of dividing the anti-Left votes didn’t deter him. When asked about his out and out defiance, he explained that he wasn’t against the alliance and wouldn’t mind seeing Banerjee as chief minister, but no way could he allow what was rightfully of the Congress to be taken away by TMC. It is believed that part of Chowdhury’s refusal to concede assembly seats to TMC stems from the fear that if TMC wins from these constituencies, in the future Banerjee would insist on fielding parliamentary candidates from Murshidabad, which had for years been the Congress forte. Last heard, not only did no one take punitive action against Chowdhury (he is deemed to extremely influential and indispensable to the Congress party), on polling day he was heard asking one of his candidates – whom he insists on calling ‘Congress’ rather than ‘independent’ – whether he was scoring runs and hitting sixes and fours (the symbol assigned to this Congress/Independent candidate was a cricket bat).
Enclaved Out
In Nadia district there is a village called Kullupara which is inhabited by 200 people, mostly Muslim farmers. 105 of them are of voting age. April 23 saw them come over the border from Bangladesh into India to cast their votes. No, they are not illegal immigrants being utilized by political parties for votes. The geographical location of their village is such that the BSF check post runs through it as does the barbed-wire fencing dividing India and Bangladesh. In a sense, they spend most of the year in a political no man’s land, but on election day, it’s clear where they belong.