Even he needed to shift

Why Gautam Deb is out of the region where he built his reputation?

It is an incident still talked about by old-timers of Basirhat,in what is now North 24-Parganas. It was 1972,before the Left Fronts time in West Bengal,and the local strongman was Shankar Banerjee,now deceased,then president of the district Congress committee of undivided 24-Parganas.

That evening,Banerjee was standing with some followers on the roadside outside the Basirhat Town Hall when a lean young man,clad in a kurta-pyjama,walked up to him and patted him on the chest. Hey Shankarda,king of Basirhat,how are you?

Not even Banerjees closest friends would have dared do such a thing,and so stunned was everybody around that no one reacted to the young mans cheek. Banerjee managed to keep calm,smiled and said,Gautam,you are going too far.

Gautam Deb,now the Left Fronts Housing Minister,was then the general secretary of the students union of Taki College. His behaviour that evening was perhaps characteristic of a man who is still known for his aggression and arrogance.

Around the same time,Taki had just seen the return of a criminal who had been away for a long time. It was Gautam Deb who sent him away again. He went to the thug and told him he should not be seen in the neighbourhood. The thug left as directed.

This election,it is Deb who is being described as the runaway. He is not contesting from Basirhat,the region where he made his reputation,and he cannot contest from neighbouring Hasnabad,which had elected him for five terms before it ceased to exist as a constituency. He has gone instead to Dum Dum,60 km away,apparently because the CPM needed to find a safe seat for a leader once believed invincible.

Gautam would have cut a sorry figure had he contested from Basirhat, admits a CPM leader,citing the 2009 parliamentary elections. Trinamool Congress candidate Haji Nurul,who won the Basirhat seat,led CPI rival Ajay Chakraborty in both Assembly segments,by 18,000 votes in Basirhat North and by 19,000 votes in Basirhat South.

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In the Dum Dum parliamentary constituency,the Trinamool Congresss Saugata Roy beat the CPMs Amitava Nandy by just 750 votes. That margin can be easily managed, the leader says. The Dum Dum Assembly constituency has 1.98 lakh voters.

Deb himself dismisses the runaway tag. The party has asked me to contest from here because this constituency is so close to Kolkata and I am one of the key campaigners for the party in the state, he says,after a morning roadshow in Dum Dum. I will not be confined to Dum Dum. I am going to North Bengal in a day or two.

It his because of his aggression that he has been assigned the campaign job. He has been taking on Mamata comment for comment. After she said the CPM has gone into a coma,he said the Trinamool Congress has had a brain death. Mamata said she would restore peace in Junglemahal and Darjeeling; Deb said if she can share her formula then Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will quit as chief minister for three months. What the softspoken Buddhadeb babu cannot do,Gautamda has done. To take on Mamata you need to be a Gautam,not a Buddha, a CPM leader says.

Bratya Bose,the Trinamool candidate against Deb,is unfazed by his rivals aggression. He has run away from Basirhat for fear of losing. All this talk is of no significance, the actor and playwright says.