Jagmohan Dalmiya and Rabindranath Tagore - wondering what could possibly link these two names together? The answer lies in the heart of Kolkata Maidan, and in the corridors of the Eden Gardens this summer. In a unique campaign stunt, Tagore’s timeless words are being used to woo voters in the Maidan circuit ahead of the upcoming elections to the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), with incumbent CAB president Prasun Mukherjee and a resurgent Dalmiya facing-off for the CAB top post on Tuesday.The Dalmiya faction caught the entire Maidan community by surprise, flooding all the voters with colourful, screaming leaflets displaying a photo of Dalmiya in his happier days, and most interestingly, with the Nobel laureate’s famous poem running parallel — Bhengecho Duar, Eshecho Jyotirmoy.The eye-catching leaflets go so far as to compare Dalmiya to God, taking a cue from the opening lines of Tagore’s poem. Apart from this, the leaflets include excerpts from leading national and vernacular newspapers praising Dalmiya. Speaking to The Indian Express, Biswarup Dey, a joint-secretary candidate and the brain behind this concept, said it was not a calculated move. “It struck me suddenly just a few days back that we could try out something like this, something different. So, once we got the idea, we planned it out fast, got hundreds of leaflets printed overnight, and started distributing them to all the concerned clubs, districts, members and voters,” Dey said.For Dalmiya, who is expected to give Mukherjee a tough fight, the Tagore effect seems to have breathed life into an otherwise mundane run-up to the elections. But the opposition isn’t amused. CAB joint-secretary Samar Paul, a bitter Dalmiya critic, says, “I have heard of what is going on. It’s nothing laudable. We don’t believe in making use of poetry and literature as campaign tools. That’s not our of way of approaching elections. We believe in sticking to what matters most during these elections — cricket and cricket administration.”
