Bengal elections: CPM wants to forget, Congress ready to forgive

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All that has changed today. “We regret what happened that day, we are sorry for what Manas Bhunia had to go through,” said B N Chandra Ghosh of the CPM, one of the 22 men named in the FIR for attacking Bhunia. “We want to request him to come here and address a public meeting. We will make all the arrangements,” he said in Mangalkot’s Dhanyaruki village.

Ghosh had been arrested and jailed for 36 days. He is out on bail and the case is pending in court.

He said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee should get all the credit for the new alliance. “Two parties that were at loggerheads for generations have united now,” he said. “This is thanks to the attacks on both sides by the ruling party that has threatened our very existence here.”

Another accused in the attack on Bhunia, Asit Ghosh, was helping write on a wall on behalf of Sahajahan Chowdhury, the CPM sitting MLA now backed by the Congress. Seven years after they had tried to oust the Congress from Mangalkot, Asit Ghosh held a brush, painting the CPM’s hammer-and-sickle within the Congress’s palm. “Our leadership has accepted this change, so should we. We will request Bhunia to come to our village for a campaign and we would like to apologise to him in person,” Ghosh said.

Chandra Ghosh called up Bhunia. As the others gathered around him, he put the phone on the speaker. Bhunia, who was campaigning at Sabang in West Medinipur, heard out the apology and the request to visit Mangalkot. Then his voice could be heard on the speaker: “I will definitely come to Mangalkot after the poll process in my constituency ends on April 11. I hold nothing against any of the CPM workers now. I have forgiven everyone and will embrace them.”

Local Congress worker Amar Pal said what had happened in 2009 is a closed chapter. “People here are peace-loving and they soon forgot what had happened at the spur of the moment in 2009,” he said. “Today we live in harmony, there has been no trouble after that. And now that there is an alliance between the Left and the Congress, we are confident of ousting the ruling party.”

With the area counting a sizeable number of Muslims, the ruling Trinamool has pitched popular leader Siddiqullah Chowdhury against Sahajahan. In most parts of the constituency, there is hardly any wall graffiti other than those of the Trinamool. CPM workers alleged they had been able to put up very little graffiti because of Trinamool muscle power with the help of the police and the administration.

Siddiqullah Chowdhury said, “The CPM has lost all support here and has no one left to write graffiti on the walls. I have been moving around the area for several days and am confident people will vote for me because this seat has had a CPM MLA for about 40 years but none did any work for the area.”

Sahajahan said the lack of enough wall graffiti did not matter because the ruling party had terrorised the entire area. “I am confident about winning here because I know people will vote for the restoration of democracy and oust this authoritarian government,” he said.