Return
to Story Page
To print: Select File and then Print from your
browser's menu
Ashis Chakrabarti
CALCUTTA, Dec 1: He has achieved for the Congress what no other party leader has been able to do in the past two decades. He has handed the poll-savvy CPI(M) the most humiliating defeat the party has suffered in its 21-year-long reign in Bengal. Leading the Congress campaign for the November 29 elections to the Berhampore municipality in Murshidabad district, he won for the party all the 23 seats, leaving nothing for the Marxists, Mamata Banerjee or her ally, the BJP.
He is Adhir Choudhury. And against him are police cases ranging from collusion in murders in Nabagram and Berhampore to extortion and keeping unlicensed firearms. If not directly involved, he had been accused of masterminding some abductions also. He was accused of being a `criminal' not just by the Marxists but even by Mamata before she left the Congress.
Senior Congress leaders of Murshidabad district like the Opposition leader in the State Assembly Atish Sinha usually kept away from Choudhury and his men. In fact, it was Choudhury'snomination as Congress candidate for the Nabagram Assembly seat in Murshidabad district in the 1996 Assembly polls that prompted Mamata, then in the Congress, to cry out against the ``criminal candidates of the party.'' Choudhury has always been a protege of former PCC president Somen Mitra, to whom Mamata lost the PCC president's poll in 1992.
Choudhury laughed while the Marxists and Mamata fretted against him during the election campaign. ``Don't be afraid of him. We'll put him in jail again if he uses his goons on the day,'' CPI(M) heavyweight and Home Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharyya told the people at election rallies. Mamata herself did not venture much in Choudhury's area but kept attacking his `mafia' operations.
But, when the poll results were announced last night, Choudhury again had the last laugh. ``They always want to give me a bad name. But the people rejected them,'' said Choudhury who won the 1996 Assembly election from his Nabagram constituency even while he was hiding from the police toevade an arrest.
``These are all old and false charges,'' said former PCC general secretary Pradip Bhattacharyya, ``Adhir is popular in the area because of his social work. Before the polls, he set up a Nagarik Mancha (citizens' forum) in Berhampore whose members cleaned garbage from the streets, put up street lamps and did lots of other voluntary work. He was a vital factor in our win in Berhampore municipality which we've been winning in any case since 1972.''
Elated Congress leaders like PCC working president Priya Ranjan DasMunshi saw in the Berhampore verdict as well as in the victory at Krishnagar civic polls the signal of the party's rebirth in the State. Even in Howrah, the third municipality that also went to the polls along with Berhampore and Krishnagar, the Congress stood second to the Left Front, practically wiping out the Trinamool Congress-BJP combine.
It was the finest hour for the Congress which has been in the wilderness since Mamata left the party and then all but decimated it in theFebruary elections to the Lok Sabha. Since this coincided with the party's spectacular victories in Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, Choudhury was basking in Sonia Gandhi's reflected glory.
Leaders of CPI(M) are completely at a loss over the mighty party machinery's abject surrender to Choudhury. They meekly point out that both Berhampore and Krishnagar civic bodies have been run by the Congress for more than 10 years and that the Left parties have always been organisationally weak in these two places. The party made a clean sweep of the three Assembly by-elections on November 25. But now Choudhury has stopped the Marxist juggernaut and also destroyed the Trinamool-BJP challenge in his area. The Congress is hoping that partymen elsewhere will emulate Choudhury's feat.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
------------------------------------------------------------
This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
------------------------------------------------------------