Armchair challenger

The veteran Congress leader8217;s prospects look bright. But that8217;s not making Mukherjee complacent. He is toiling hard to wrest the seat from the CPIM. With barely a week left for the ballots to be cast, there is a distinct and visible surge of support for him in Jangipur Lok Sabha seat that has traditionally been held by the Marxists.

For years, the constituency in central-south Bengal has lived with many problems. The Farakka Barrage feeder canal8212;the lifeline to Kolkata port8212; cuts through this constituency. There is a seepage of water from the canal and also it has a higher water level than the surrounding rivers, resulting in a 8216;8216;back flow8217;8217; of water into the rivers from the canal. It keeps not less than 40,000 hectare of prime agricultural land inundated through the year. And those living by the Ganga, devastating erosion has robbed thousands of their homes in successive years.

Besides, Jangipur is the core of a thriving multi-crore bidi industry in Bengal. It generates crores of rupees as 8216;8216;cess8217;8217; to the government but not much of it had ever been ploughed back into Jangipur8217;s development. The 600,000-odd bidi binders, mostly women and children, are victims of a exploitative trade practice8212;controlled largely by middlemen8212;earning as little as Rs 35 for binding 1000 bidis.

Mukherjee promises better deals for the people. 8216;8216;The Left Front during the past 25 years has not been able to prepare a master plan to tackle either erosion or the problem of flooding from the feeder canal. With your blessings, I promise to look into it. Win or lose, Jangipur is now my second home,8217;8217; says Mukherjee in small group meetings he had been addressing in hundreds, lending that personal touch to the voters.

Abul Hasnat Khan, two-term MP from the CPIM here, is somewhat buried under the weight and glamour of his opponent. But his forte is the party8217;s organisational support. Political circles point out the high percentage of Muslim voters in Jangipur about 60 per cent, an overwhelming majority of whom support the Left. Hasnat won the last two polls by margins of 72,000 and 61,000 respectively in 1998 and 1999.

Of the seven assembly segments under Jangipur, five are held by LF MLAs. In the last panchayat polls, disunity among front partners reflected badly in the ballot box. Going by the panchayat polls, Hasnat8217;s winning margin of 61,000 votes was wiped off by the Congress.

So all hopes are not lost for Mukherejee and the Congress. In fact, the Congress challenge in West Bengal is restricted to this particular belt of Murshidabad-Malda, where the party hopes to win at least four seats with Mukherjee leading the charge.