People's Democracy

B Prasant

AS per press reports, BJP leader and union home minister L K Advani did not think that the Congress(I)-Trinamul Congress alliance had the strength to dislodge the Left Front in the coming Vidhan Sabha elections.

Addressing several thinly-attended public meetings in Midnapore, Hooghly, and Bankura districts, Advani confessed that he and the rest of the top level BJP leaders "had been duped by Mamata Banerjee earlier" when she had said that a Trinamul Congress-BJP alliance could unseat the Left Front in Bengal.

Answering questions from the media in Kolkata on May 4, Advani also said that if Mamata Banerjee seeks to wriggle back to the NDA in the wake of the polls, the entire episode would leave the NDA members "very unhappy."

Advani also said the BJP attached importance to the fact that some important members of the Trinamul Congress who are also members of the parliament, were seeking to meet and speak to both himself and prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayi. He also carped about how the law-and-order situation in Bengal "continued to deteriorate."

In the meanwhile, L K Advani, before leaving the city told newspersons at the Kolkata airport that he was no longer certain of an anti-Left verdict in the coming Bengal Vidhan Sabha polls; he blamed Mamata Banerjee for the probable outcome. Advani then added that the Trinamul Congress alignment with a corrupt political party like the Congress was not likely to cut much ice with the electorate.

Campaigning for the BJP in Howrah, another union minister Sushma Swaraj attacked Mamata’s "opportunistic" move to swing away from the NDA. She said Mamata was "going to regret her decision in the not-too-distant future."

In the meantime, a visibly irritated and desperate-sounding Mamata Banerjee was found uttering a series of rather engaging lines at her meeting in north Kolkata. A few samples:

"Do not ask me, please, about who murdered the late Forward Bloc leader Hemanta Kumar Basu: that was an affair of the Congress whereas we are but the Trinamul Congress. Take note of the difference."

Elsewhere, commenting on the decision of the Trinamul candidate in Kespur decision to withdraw his candidature in the wake of the arrest of more than 60 hardened criminals in the pay of the Trinamul Congress during their ill-motivated bid to launch an attack on Kespur and the surrounding villages, CPI(M) leader Biman Basu told newspersons at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan that it would not augur well for the Trinamul Congress leader if this threat of withdrawal actually materialised. For the Trinamul Congress leader had repeatedly gloated over the fact that she had made Kespur the "shespur" (the end of the line) for the CPI(M).

Biman Basu again cautioned the democratic-minded people of Bengal to remain vigilant against all attempts by the Trinamul Congress leader to try and act out yet another drama about her getting "attacked by the CPI(M)" in order to try ride the crest of a wave of sympathy that she desperately hoped for as the assembly polls drew nearer.

Responding to Advani’s comment about the law and order situation in Bengal, Biman Basu asked the BJP leader to look up the relevant chapters in the booklet recently published by the union home ministry. The booklet makes the observation that the law and order situation in Bengal is far better than that prevailing in other states in the country.

Speaking to the media following rounds of meeting with the leadership of various political parties and with the top echelon of the bureaucracy if the state, chief election commissioner Dr Manohar Singh Gill said he was convinced that conditions for free, fair, and peaceful polls undoubtedly existed in Bengal. Rebutting the talk that the polls this time would be a "tense affair," the CEC said not more than 12-14 constituencies in the state could be described as "sensitive."

The CEC lamented that Bengal with a population of over eight crore had to be satisfied with 50,000 police while a state like Punjab had a compliment of 80,000 police. The situation, said Dr Gill, must not remain this way. He promised the posting of central police forces in adequate numbers in Bengal for the assembly elections.

Satisfied that the state police was taking necessary measures to ensure the security of Trinamul leader Ms Mamata Banerjee, Dr Gill said he had complete confidence in the efficiency of the police administration in the state. The lady had earlier relinquished her security cover in a grandiloquent gesture citing "deterioration of law and order in Bengal."

In a lighter vein, Dr Gill said that he was always impressed by the wit that marked the poll graffiti in Bengal, something that he did not find anywhere else in the country. He declared that he "would not get heart-broken should some of the graffiti survived the polls and continued to adorn the walls of the city."

During the day, the state unit of the CPI(M) submitted to the CEC 22 instances of Congress(I)-Trinamul Congress alliance’s slander against the CPI(M). It also registered verbal protest over some other cases of maligning.

The CPI(M) also said the names of voters might have been deleted from the lists that were sent to the presiding officers of Kultali, Joynagar, Baruipur, Bhangar and Sonarpur assembly segments.

Addressing thinly attended election rallies in Kaharagpur, Burdwan, Serampore and Ranaghat, Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Ms Mamata Banerjee virtually vied with one another in maligning the Left Front, and shouted "CPI(M) Hataao" in unison.

While Mamata Banerjee was at her hysterical worst in shrilly exhorting the assemblage ad nauseam to remember, "Change, any change at all, is good for you," few were willing to listen to her. They preferred to swarm around the dais for a bit of shade as the sun rained down from a sullen bronzed sky.

In her enthusiasm to outshine her newfound ally, Mrs Sonia Gandhi unfortunately became more and more liberal with the truth, as the day rolled past in whirl of dust thrown up by her helicopter.

She began innocuously enough to declare that "kindly make Mamata Banerjee your chief minister, since after leaving the NDA we have no doubts left about her." That was all part of her written script. But she started off on a different note subsequent to that, when she waxed eloquent about how "millions of people left Bengal every day to go and look for work elsewhere in India."

That did not draw the requisite amount of decibels from the crowd who preferred to look at her in a markedly bemused fashion. She then went a step further: "Bengal has the largest number of unemployed in the whole country, and the number is increasing." No response from the obdurate people.

She got desperate. "Bengal under CPI(M) misrule has no panchayati raj institutions functioning for a long time now." This was at Burdwan where the panchayati raj system has repeatedly drawn representatives of political parties and academics, from elsewhere in India as well as from abroad, to get a first-hand view of the decentralised rural governance at work.

She should consider herself fortunate that her brand of Hindi was slightly beyond the level of comprehension of the rural folk in Burdwan, Nadia, Hooghly and Midnapore.

All trade union organisations in Bengal have condemned Trinamul Congress leader Ms Mamata Banerjee’s declaration at a recent election rally that she would "ban all trade unions once she gets to hold office in this state."

In a statement, state CITU general secretary Chittabrata Majumdar said that while there "is no mention of this threat in the 12-page "election manifesto" of her outfit, she has chosen to utter this kind of anti-worker drivel during her election campaign." This, Majumdar said, proved not only how generous with the truth she was, but also how she was an innate enemy of the working class itself.

Mamata Banerjee’s double-speak, said Majumdar, was also proved by the fact that she would not utter a single word against either the BJP or the NDA during her campaign across the state. She also keeps her options wide open by refusing to officially inform the speaker about her decision to quit the NDA, added the CITU leader. (INN)