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STATES,
WEST BENGAL
The
Road From Keshpur
However,
after the 1998 panchayat elections, the Trinamool started from a one-horse
town called Keshpur, 140 km from Calcutta in Midnapore district, a programme
to mobilise the surrounding villagers. It meant challenging the CPI(M)'s
domination over the electoral process. It is widely suspected that the
massive turnout of voters in the state (see box), particularly in the
rural areas, is due to a regime perfected by the Marxists in which the
non-party voters are virtually debarred from voting, their ballot papers
being shoved into the boxes by armies of party loyalists. The Keshpur
rebels began questioning this. They even reversed it in the by-election
to the Panskura Lok Sabha constituency (Keshpur is one of its assembly
segments) in June this year, in which Trinamool's Bikram Sarkar defeated
the Left Front candidate Gurudas Dasgupta.
 |
| CPI(M)
supporters celebrate the "liberation" of Keshpur from the
clutches of Mamata. |
The CPI(M)
could surely not be a silent spectator. There were stray skirmishes between
the Left and the Trinamool-bjp for a year in which many lives were lost.
However, the Marxists did not attempt a putsch until the monsoon session
of Parliament was over in end-August. By then they got some of their chosen
police officers in strategic posts, notably putting Gaurav Datta, a loyal
IPS officer, in charge of Midnapore district. There were many thana-level
changes down the line. Politically, the party handed over the responsibility
to "fix" the Trinamool to Sushanta Ghosh, the young minister
of state for transport whose constituency and base lies in Gahrbeta, a
strategic point at the trijunction of the districts of Bankura, Midnapore
and Hooghly. Gahrbeta, under Ghosh, became a sort of Bengali Yenan, the
only difference being that Mao Zedong was not armed like Ghosh with a
mobile phone, with the police officials of the adjoining districts at
his beck and call.
While the
CPI(M) counter-offensive was being planned, Basu was deftly using his
retirement card. "It was a move," says Mamata, "to gain
undeserved sympathy, and respect, across the political spectrum, including
from among partners of the NDA." The Marxist retaliation came on
August 28, with hordes of volunteers, mostly outsiders, overrunning the
Keshpur villages that had planted the Trinamool flag in fields, school
buildings, granaries, rice mills and homes. On September 1, when Bhattacharya
said "Keshpur is quiet", at least four deaths were reported
from the Trinamool camp-Mantu Bagdi, Sheikh Tainuddin, Hormuz Ali and
Majibar Rahman-all from Keshpur. Mohammed Rafiq, general secretary of
the Midnapore district Trinamool Youth Congress and the brain behind the
party's brawn, fled his village and was hiding in the party office in
Midnapore city with about 50 fugitives. He says, "It is all over.
We could not match the range of the CPI(M)'s guns."
Midnapore
SP Datta and CPI(M)'s minister Ghosh, of course, have a different version.
Datta says that "two years back the Trinamool supporters took over
hundreds of villages, planted their flag and asked everyone to obey them.
In village parlance, obedience means cleansing the villages of supporters
of the rival party". Ghosh alleges that the Trinamool "roughs"
had, since May 1998, "taken control of 68 of the 200 booths of my
(Gahrbeta East) constituency, which includes 28 in the Keshpur panchayat
samiti area". Both talk of a large concentration of licensed arms
in the area. Datta says that the ratio of unlicensed to licensed arms
could be as high as 10 to 1, hinting at an operational armoury of some
15,000 firearms. The obvious question is: if the Trinamool "roughs"
were so well-armed, why did their defence crush like an eggshell at the
first sight of the red brigade?
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The
Government should encash at least a part of its stake in LIC and GIC before
its too late, suggests INDIA TODAY associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar
in 
