People's Democracy

Left Front Sweeps Haldia Municipal Election

B Prasant

THE hype was fearsome. From the day, the Haldia municipality was declared to be going for election as per schedule, the media egged on the opposition with ‘evidence’ that the issues surrounding Nandigram imbroglio and the Singur episodes would ensure a complete wipe out for the CPI(M) and the Left Front at Haldia.

Long articles filled with worn-out anti-communist clichés started to appear in the broadsheets and tabloids. The audio-visual channels started to give massive publicity to not only Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress and the Pradesh Congress, but also to the communal outfit that the fundamentalist Siddiqullah Chaudhuri runs.

Then there was the mahajot or grand alliance between the Trinamul Congress and the Pradesh Congress. The stage, according to the Bengali dailies and news channels, appeared to be ‘set for a landslide victory’ for the two Congresses and Chaudhuri’s bunch of fanatics who would not hesitate to manhandle a senior Imam who had gone to Nandigram to bring peace and amity amongst all communities.

The election campaign by the opposition was pure threat and aggression. Am ambience of terror was carefully created; pre-planed, to send the ugly message to the populace of Haldia that any vote for the CPI(M) and the Left Front would bring disaster to the concerned voters, even to the locality they lived in.

Parallel to this there was a vicious campaign that once the Left Front emerged victorious, the majority of the township would be converted into a ‘chemical hub’ that will only spew killing poisonous gases and thus make Haldia a virtual ghost city run by machines. Thousands of refugees will have to abandon their creature comforts of city life and would have to rough it out in the surrounding rural countryside.

Siddiqullah Chaudhuri ran a communal campaign all through the run up to the election. The Maoists and the Naxalites pitched in with messages of pure terror, shamelessly calling upon voters to cast their verdict in favour of the Trinamul Congress-Pradesh Congress combination.

SWEEPING VICTORY

The people of Haldia came boldly out, ignored the opposition campaign and threats, voted for the CPI(M) and the Left Front, and attached their stamp of approval to the developmental perspective of the Left Front and the Left Front government. LF chairman Biman Basu has congratulated the people of Haldia for their political majority as was reflected in the pattern of votes cast.

The 2007 election results look like this.

CPI(M)                                            17 seats
CPI                                                   02 seats
LF                                                    19 seats
Trinamul Congress/ mahajot     06 seats
PDCE (Siddiqullah group)          01 seat
Opposition                                    07 seats