Out in the cold in Congress, how Adhir Chowdhury is stepping up for a comeback

Chowdhury said he also spoke with the PM about the Matua community in Bengal, which, he added, “fear that their names will be removed from the electoral rolls in the Election Commission’s ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise”.

Four days later, Chowdhury undertook a day-long visit to Sambalpur in Odisha to meet Bengali migrant workers, who were allegedly facing atrocities there, in order to conduct a first-hand assessment of the situation. He began his visit from the site where Juvel Rana, a 30-year-old Bengali migrant from Murshidabad, was killed by some miscreants, and interacted with his co-workers.

Chowdhury visited various locations across Sambalpur to interact with Bengali migrant labourers to understand their concerns related to safety, livelihood, and alleged apathy of police and administration.

He assured the migrants that he will stand firmly by them and make all efforts to protect their rights. He also called for curbing the trend of “parallel policing system” in some states, where several goons, he alleged, asked Bengali-speaking migrant workers to show their identity proof as they suspected them to be “Bangladeshi infiltrators”.

Some local Congress activists accompanied Chowdhury through his Sambalpur visit, whom he entrusted with the responsibility of coordinating with the Bengali migrants to provide them “continuous assistance”.

Months after being sidelined in the Bengal Congress, Chowdhury has been making attempts to make his presence felt in state politics, even as he is said to be considering the possibility of contesting the Assembly elections.

A five-time MP from Baharampur in Murshidabad district, Chowdhury, who was also the leader of the Congress in the previous Lok Sabha, suffered a shock defeat at the hands of the Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s debutant candidate Yousuf Pathan, the cricketer-turned-politician, in his constituency in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Chowdhury was then also the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee (WBPCC) president.

A staunch critic of TMC supremo and Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Chowdhury has also been a strong proponent of the Congress’s alliance with the CPI(M)-led Left to take on both the TMC and the BJP in the state.

While Chowdhury has been unflinching in his criticism of Banerjee, the latter has also remained opposed to him, campaigning pro-actively to ensure his defeat from Baharampur.

The tension between the Congress and the TMC, despite being the INDIA bloc allies, was often attributed to the strained relations between Banerjee and Chowdhury.

In September 2024, the AICC leadership replaced Cowdhury with Subhankar Sarkar as the WBPCC chief, who is considered “conciliatory” towards the TMC leadership.

In the 2021 elections, when the Congress had allied with the Left, both of them could not even open their accounts.

This time, the Congress is likely to go solo even as the face-off would be mainly between the TMC and the BJP. A senior state Congress leader said, “Our party leadership is not trying to form an alliance with the TMC in the upcoming Assembly polls. It is also not eager to tie up with the Left, looking rather to go alone.”

A measure of Chowdhury’s isolation in the state Congress could be gauged from the point that he was conspicuously absent from the “homecoming” event of Rajya Sabha MP Mausam Benazir Noor at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters in Delhi last Saturday, when she quit the TMC to return to the grand old party. Noor, the niece of Congress stalwart late Ghani Khan Choudhury, is a key face of the Muslim-dominated Malda district.

While Adhir Chowdhury has now seized on the row over alleged atrocities against Bengali migrants, this was not the first time he has raked it up. Last July too, when the matter of some Bengali migrant workers from Murshidabad, Burdwan or Nadia being “pushed back” to Bangladesh following their detention from Mumbai came to light, Chowdhury had also tried to take up the issue.

A state Congress leader close to Chowdhury said, “Dada (Chowdhury) is preparing to fight the Assembly election. He may contest from Baharampur or Naoda seat in Murshidabad district. Some may question the bid of a Congress veteran and former Union minister like Adhir Chowdhury to enter the Assembly poll fray. But it is like cricket, where if an ace cricketer is dropped from the Indian team, he may first try to prove himself by playing in Ranji or Duleep Trophy tournaments.”

A Congress insider said, “Chowdhury is a CWC member and one of our senior-most leaders. He can do anything for the party. As regards the question of the party’s alliance for the coming elections, that decision will be taken by our party high command, not anybody else.”