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Cong
dummies hurdle in Left path
Subrata
Nagchoudhury
Berhampore
(Murshidabad), May 5:
Berhampore MP Adhir Chowdhury is among the very few Congress leaders
who dares call the Trinamool Congress a ‘‘parasite’’
in his territory.
And if Ghani Khan in Malda refused to budge from Englishbazar, Adhir
Chowdhury has stood his ground in as many as seven Assembly seats
where he has put up ‘‘dummy’’ Congress candidates
as Independents along with the Trinamool’s official candidates.
But Chowdhury insists that by putting up these Independent candidates,
he is only trying to ‘‘strengthen Didi’s hands’’.
He firmly believes that Mamata Banerjee, if she is to become the
next chief minister of West Bengal, will need the winning MLAs on
her side. These seven Assembly seats should have gone to the Congress.
But when the final Congress-Trinamool agreement allotted these seats
to the latter, he got Congress leaders from these seats to contest
as Independents. ‘‘What can I do if the seat sharing is
not done on the basis of the ground reality? The Trinamool Congress
is non-existent in these areas and if I had accepted the seat-sharing
agreement, it would have been a cakewalk for the Left in Murshidabad,’’
he says.
What’s more, Chowdhury has also evolved a strategy to avoid
disciplinary action from the party: He is not openly campaigning
for the Independents. Instead, he takes along the Congress-turned-Independents
on his campaign and tells voters to use their ‘‘discretion’’.
And given his tremendous popularity, Chowdhury can get away with
this defiance. In Berhampore, he is often referred to as the town’s
‘Robinhood’ because of his charity, kindness and reputation
of standing by those in distress. But he freely admits that he doesn’t
mind ‘‘using muscle power when needed’’. Residents
of Berhampore have had ample evidence of his muscle power and therefore,
Chowdhury is as ‘‘dreaded as he is loved’’.
In fact, he shot to fame in the 1996 Assembly polls which he fought
despite having to go underground because of a murder case pending
against him and still wrested the Nabagram Assembly constituency
from the CPI(M).
Chowdhury remote-controlled his campaign so effectively that Berhampore
still recalls the 1996 Nabagram poll with awe. Adhir Chowdhury did
not turn up for a single election rally or meeting.
A picture of his was placed on the dais and a recorded speech broadcast
to reach out to voters. ‘‘It was the remarkable victory
which brought an end to my life underground,’’ Chowdhury
admits. ‘‘The first day I entered the state Assembly,
I confronted Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, asking him to prove the charges
against me. Till date he has not been able to do so. It was all
fabricated.’’
Ever since, he has worked wonders for the Congress in Murshidabad
district. He graduated to the MP seat in 1998 and last year, he
personally took charge of the Berhampore municipal polls for the
Congress. The result was a 23-0 win in favour of the Congress. Chowdhury
is also credited with changing the face of Berhampore town in a
short time.
Among the Left constituents, it is only the RSP that has significant
strength in this district, but it too suffered a split on the eve
of the elections. The party is now banking on a division of the
anti-Left vote because of the fact that both the Congress and the
Trinamool are in the fray in a large number of seats.
The BJP also has a committed votebank in this border district and
is expected to cut into the Opposition votes. But Chowdhury is more
than confident that his ‘‘dummies’’ will come
out victorious. ‘‘The outcome will dispel Trinamool’s
misunderstanding,” he says.’
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