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STATES: ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS
2001
Ticket-seekers Line Up At BJP's Door
Now, with the Trinamool-Congress
alliance leaving many of their leaders ticketless, there is a beeline
of ticket-seekers at the BJP's door. At Ashoknagar in Kolkata's northern
periphery, Badal Bhattacharya of the BJP -who won a by-election with Trinamool's
support-faces Trinamool's Ashok Krishna Datta, a septuagenarian politician
of the P.C. Sen era. Such splitting of the anti-Left votes is on the cards
in most places where the BJP has more than a toehold. And such constituencies
are well over 50, considering that in 1996 the party had secured more
than 10 per cent votes in 43 constituencies.
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Hate
her or love her, for the first time since Jyoti Basu the state elections
seem to revolve around one leader—Mamata.
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Though state BJP chief Ashim Ghosh claims that
the party cannot "be wished away", much of Mamata's grandiose
plans of a triumphant entry into Writers' Buildings is based on doing
just that. Till last year, she understood the party's importance in the
anti-Left strategy, which is why she drummed up the 'mahajot' theory-of
a Trinamool-Congress-BJP coalition in West Bengal for the sole purpose
of dislodging the Marxists. It failed in the face of sustained opposition
from state Congress satraps like Mukherjee and Dasmunshi-who wouldn't
mind leaving Bengal to the reds as long as they do well for themselves
at the Centre-and due to Congress President Sonia Gandhi's aversion to
any understanding with the BJP.
Sonia, on the other hand, wanted to rope in the
Trinamool to weaken the NDA. It is at her bidding that Dasmunshi began
secret parleys with Trinamool MP Sudip Bandopadhyay, old comrades in the
Congress from the 1970s. Kamal Nath, an old Kolkata hand, was given the
charge of West Bengal as AICC general secretary. Finally, a "summit"
between Sonia and Mamata was organised, when the two travelled together,
without interlocutors, in a car from Leh to Kargil, as members of an all-party
delegation. It was after this that Mamata turned a grumbler in the A.B.
Vajpayee Cabinet, insisting on a no-fare-hike railway budget, on a short
fuse concerning every privatisation move, and generally sulking. She avoided
Vajpayee's Iftar party but turned up at Sonia's. The loyalties had been
switched. The Tehelka episode, in the wake of which she resigned, was
an excuse.
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CULT FIGURE: Mamata is the poll
issue |
Just
how painful such a forced political marriage can be is evident not only
from Panja's outburst but from the desperation of many local Trinamool
and Congress leaders who had to be relocated because of seat adjustments.
Trinamool leader from south Kolkata, Nirbed Roy,
who was given a ticket for Tamluk in distant Midnapore, was thrashed by
the locals who said the fiery Midnaporeans wouldn't relish the idea of
hosting a "ghar jamai" (resident son-in-law). Natabar Bagdi,
earlier in the
CPI(M) and an influential Purulia leader who contested a previous poll
with Trinamool support, did not get a ticket, so he has a score to settle.
Mamata's north Bengal lieutenant Dilip Das, whom
Das Munshi wouldn't tolerate as the alliance candidate from that part,
had to be nominated from Taltola, in the heart of Kolkata, upsetting local
hopeful Tapati Mandal, a medical doctor with good networking in the constituency.
At Canning (east) in the Sunderbans, Left Front minister Abdur Rezzak
Mollah, who polls over 70 per cent in every election, now faces not only
the alliance candidate but the local Trinamool block president who, on
being denied ticket, has overnight switched to the BJP and obtained nomination.
With so much trouble on her hands, and the unsolved
BJP puzzle, Mamata's choice between "now" and "never"
may be self-defeating. Luckily for her, she doesn't have the reputation
of living by her word: she threatened suicide in 1996 for alleged irregularities
in Congress ticket distribution, and has thrice dangled the resignation
letter before Vajpayee.
So her dream of entering Bengal's "Buckingham
Place"-that's how she referred to the Buckingham Palace before a
distinguished gallery-can, after all. wait for five years if it is not
fulfilled now. To dislodge the Left, with its tentacles spread deep into
Bengal's
rural society, it requires an all-inclusive solidarity much wider and
deeper than what Mamata has to offer.
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