People's Democracy

  Youth, Women Dominate Bengal LF Candidate

B Prasant

THE Bengal Left Front has as usual stolen a march on its rival political parties by announcing the list of candidates for the forthcoming Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) polls. The list clearly depicts the increase in the number of younger candidates; there are more women candidates this time around.

The announcement of the list of Left Front’s candidates two months before the polls are scheduled to take place – on June 19 – has certainly provided the CPI(M) and LF workers to get ahead with election campaign in good time. The graffiti depicting the slogans of development and better governance given by the Left Front have already decorated the walls of the metropolis. The names of the candidates, along with symbols they carry, have been emblazoned all over the city.

Left Front chairman, and CPI(M) Polit Bureau member, Biman Basu has said that the election manifesto of the Bengal Left Front for the KMC polls would be based on facts gathered by LF workers through house-to-house campaign regarding the services, or the lack of them, provided to the masses by the Trinamul Congress-BJP-run KMC board which appeared to be more interested in toadying up to a small slice of the very rich than to the people at large.

Of the 138 seats for which names of candidates are announced, 97 would be contested by the CPI(M), 12 by the CPI, 11 by the Forward Bloc, 10 by the RSP, two each by the Forward Bloc-Marxist and the Democratic Socialist Party, one by the Biplabi Bangla Congress, one by the Bengal Samajwadi Party, two by the Rashtriya Janata Dal. The names of two CPI candidates as well as the name of the candidate for ward 63 will be announced shortly, Biman Basu said.

In the list of LF candidates, there are 57 women. Women candidates have been put up in very many general (i.e., unreserved) seats as well. Biman Basu said that such a large number of women candidates had never ever been put up in the KMC polls.

Of the new candidates, men and women, youth predominates. There are veteran candidates in the fray, but certainly, the emphasis is on youth power. There is a definite attempt at reducing the ‘generation gap,’ said Biman Basu. The Left Front shall fight united and it aims at winning and garnering at least 50 per cent votes in each of the seats contested for.

Stringently opposing the vociferous campaign in a section of the corporate media about the existing KMC board ‘having done great and good deeds for the city,’ Biman Basu said that the development of a city would always be measured in terms of overall development and not on the ‘head count of one or two flyovers.’

Biman Basu also pointed out that the present KMC board has at best managed to complete one or two projects which were almost at the last stages of completion when the change of guard took place half-a-decade ago. Basu noted the important role played by the various departments of the Bengal Left front government in augmenting the process of development of the metropolis over the past decades.