No red carpet for CPM

Meanwhile,political pundits still haven’t come to a decisive verdict on who will win the most votes. “The 16 per cent minority vote and the 27 per cent non-Bengali votes will have a big role to play,” says a CPI(M) member,who has been a campaign manager of sorts for Md Salim.

The Kolkata North constituency has been formed after delimitation by merging the erstwhile Calcutta North West and Calcutta North East seats. Only three wards under these two constituencies are now under Kolkata South.

Currently,the seven Assembly segments included in Kolkata North are: Shyampukur,Beleghata,Entally,Chowringhee,Maniktala,Jorashanko and Cossipore-Belgachia. Post delimitation,the constituency has around 14 lakh voters.

Neither the Trinamool Congress nor the CPI(M) is quite sure how the re-drawn maps will affect their prospects. In the earlier Calcutta North East seat,Ajit Panja was the undisputed leader from 1984 to 1999,winning four times on a Congress ticket and twice on a Trinamool Congress ticket. He was finally defeated in 2004 by CPI(M)’s poster boy Md Salim,by a margin of about 73,780 votes.

In Calcutta North West,Sudhangsu Seal of the CPI(M) was elected MP in 2004,after he defeated Subrata Mukherjee of the Trinamool Congress by a margin of 43,000 votes. Sudip Bandyopadhyay,who had contested as an Independent supported by the Congress then,had gathered about 81,952 votes.

This time,with the Congress and Trinamool joining hands,Salim is facing a tough fight.

“Three of Kolkata North’s seven Assembly segments are represented by the CPI(M) in the Assembly — Entally,Beliaghata and Manicktala,” says Bandyopadhyay. A fourth,the newly created Cossipore-Belgachhia,too has a sizeable section of CPI(M) voters. “There is no room for complacency on our part,” he adds.

“We are hoping that the Urdu-speaking voters will favour us. Moreover,this constituency has a huge chunk of middle- and upper middle-class people who are likely to support the Left on the industrialisation issue,” says a CPI(M) member.

“I have got overwhelming response during my campaigns. People feel that if all the other states can have industrialisation,why can’t we?” says Salim.

But at the grassroots level,there is considerable resentment against Salim,as voters feel that their MP has been far too busy in Delhi. There is also resentment among the minorities after the Sachar Committee report. “I have voted for the Left for many years now. But nothing has changed. We still face the problems of severe power cuts,waterlogging and illegal hawkers. This time I want change,” says Santosh Kumar Khemka (60),a textile merchant in Burrabazar.

“The minority community is with us and the middle- and upper middle-class know that even if jobs were lost in Singur,the Left government has not been able to solve the problem of unemployment in urban areas,” says a Trinamool worker. And with even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pitching in to campaign here,hopes are high in the Congress-Trinamool camp.

The BJP has fielded Tathagata Roy,but the saffron party does not have much following — or expectation — here.