But, at least, Ghani isn't harming Dasmunshi's cause. In Raigunj, two Congressmen -- former leader of the Congress in the West Bengal Assembly Zainal Abedin and suspended party MLA Dilip Das -- are doing just that, hellbent on getting Dasmunshi defeated like lasttime. The party observer for the state, Vyalar Ravi, has failed to sort out the problem. In his campaigning, therefore, Dasmunshi spends as much time in attacking the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress as in defending himself against the open revolt by the two leaders.

Himself a political chameleon who once left the Congress and joined the Congress (S), Dasmunshi is not new to the endless intra-party intrigues in the Congress. Last time Abedin had put up his son, Sayesta, as an independent nominee. Also queering his pitch was the veteran Congress leader of the area, Golam Yazdani, who had won from Raigunj as the Congress candidate in 1980, 1984 and 1989. All this cost Dasmunshi dearly as he lost the seat to the CPI(M)'s Subrata Mukherjee by only 6,000 votes. The Trinamool Congress had left the seat to the BJP last time and the BJP nominee, Rahul Sinha, had polled 160,000 votes.

This time the attack is more vicious. ``The most damaging campaign Abedin and Das are carrying out is that Priya is anti-Muslim.This is simply not true,'' says a Dasmunshi aide. To counter this, Dasmunshi has been saying in his speeches that he has attended festivals at Abedin's house. ``That's a lie and Priya is known to be a compulsive liar,'' says Abedin.

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) candidate Salauddin is known to be an Abedin acolyte. Dasmunshi's worries on this account are real because Muslims form nearly 24 per cent of the electorate in this communally sensitive constituency, bordering Kishangunj district of Bihar and Bangladesh. In fact, neither Dasmunshi, nor his CPI(M) and BJP rivals talk about the ISI threat here. ``The ISI issue has made large sections of the community feel persecuted,'' says Mohammed Mohiuddin Khan, a madrasa teacher in the Goalpakhar area.

Despite these odds, people are giving Dasmunshi a fair chance of winning the seat this time, mainly for two reasons. First, if the Congress is a divided house here, the Left camp too is not united. The CPI(M) has a running battle in the district with theForward Bloc, which holds three of the seven assembly seats in the constituency. In fact, Raigunj is a unique case in the state -- the CPI(M), which has put up the Lok Sabha candidate, does not have an MLA in any of the seven Assembly segments of the constituency. The FB has three MLAs, the CPI one and the Congress three. The second factor favouring Dasmunshi is the weak candidate of the Trinamool Congress, Biplab Mitra. The party hardly has any organisational network in the district.

Since 1980 no winner in this constituency has had a winning margin of more than 30,000 votes. This must surely give Dasmunshi some hope.