On the ground in West Bengal, bitter foes try to be friends

The Congress has fielded candidates for five of the 16 assembly seats in Howrah, while the CPI(M) is contesting the remaining seats.

“It’s not a formal alliance,” says CPI(M) Politburo member Mohammad Salim. “It is more of a people’s alliance. The demand came from the ground. While talks began in December-January, the fact is that there was an invisible cooperation between workers and unions of non-Trinamool parties long before that — for nearly a year. The workers took up issues together and we saw that there was pressure to get together,’’ says Salim.

Sanata Mandal, a 55-year-old CPI(M) worker in Sankrail, echoes Salim. “In Sankrail, there is nothing unusual about this alliance. Seventeen months ago, the Delta Jute Mill in Sankrail closed down, leaving hundreds of workers jobless. For the past year, both the CPI(M) and Congress trade unions have been leading protests and trying to get the jute mill to re-open,’’ he says.

Mandal is one of the many who have turned up for CPI(M) Sankrail candidate Anirban Hazra’s rally. The ground is decked up with CPI(M) and Congress flags. The rally was jointly organised by workers of both parties.

“Of course we helped to organise this rally just as much as any CPI(M) worker,’’ says Congress worker Sadiq Ali Mondol. “And no, we don’t like the CPI(M), their ideology is different from ours. We have shared a violent history with them. They beat up our workers when they were in power. They made our lives miserable. But anything is better than this (TMC). The Trinamool has forcibly taken over our offices. They have been buying off our panchayat members. For any work that you need to get done, you have to pay a commission. So, whether you want to build a road or appoint a teacher at a local primary school, it all involves big cash,” says Mondol.

“People have been asking why we would ally with the Left. In 2011, we were with the Trinamool. We gave up our seats for them. We didn’t want to, but we did it for the greater good. The TMC gave us one seat in 2011. At least we have five seats in the district this year. The Congress has been sacrificing its seats for years now. We brought the Trinamool to power in 2011. We will bring the Left to power in 2016,’’ he says.

Congress worker Alok Koney’s name was shortlisted for the Sankrail seat. But he was asked to stand down in favour of the CPI(M). Now Koney is in charge of all rallies in the area, on behalf of the Congress. “Once the party decided, that’s it. It is our responsibility to throw our full weight behind the jot’s (alliance’s) candidates and ensure that they win,’’ says Koney.

It hasn’t been a smooth journey for the alliance. With the Left and Congress being rivals in the Kerala assembly elections, and given the shared history of hostility between different parties of the alliance in Bengal, there was opposition from both the Left and Congress.

Congress insiders say that senior leaders Manas Bhuiyan and Deepa Dasmunshi were among those who opposed the alliance. “Rahul Gandhi sent an emissary to check the ground reality and found that the district leaders were actually in favour of it,’’ says a party insider.

Senior Congress leader O P Mishra says the first glimmer of a possible alliance came when he arranged an event to celebrate Jawaharlal Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary in November last year. “This was barely seven days after the Bihar results. All the non-TMC and non-BJP leaders came. The Left sent a 10-member delegation including Surjya Kanta Mishra. That is what I would consider the political beginning,’’ he says.

The “mahagathbandhan’’, as Mishra calls it, comprises not only the Congress and CPI(M), but others like the RSP, JD(U) and Akranto Amra — a citizens’ party formed to support those who have been charged with sedition by the TMC government. Akranto Amra’s star candidate is Jadavpur University Professor Ambikesh Mahapatra, who was arrested for sharing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s caricature.

The Left faced a fiercer fight from within. Senior CPI(M) leader in Bardhaman, Amar Haldar, says he was opposed to the alliance, and still is. “There are too many ideological differences. But now that the party has taken a certain stand, we are all backing it despite our own personal views,” he says. The CPI(M)’s Bardhaman committee is known to have opposed the alliance the most when the discussions were still underway.

Earlier a Left bastion, Bardhaman saw a tough fight in 2011. Of the 26 assembly constituencies in the district, the TMC won 13 seats while the CPI(M) was reduced to nine seats — it won most of these with slim margins. In three seats that the TMC won, the two parties had equal vote share — Memari (47 per cent), Ketugram (45 per cent) and Raniganj (47 per cent). This year, the CPI(M) will contest 21 seats while the Congress has five.

Party insiders say it was the Bengal units of both the Congress and CPI(M) that put pressure on their central leadership to agree to an alliance. And while most districts in Bengal have fallen in line, Murshidabad, with its 22 assembly seats, is a different story.

Both the Congress and RSP have fielded candidates in what they are now calling a “friendly fight”. “I still have reservations and many questions about the ‘jot’. For instance, what happens after the elections? How is a common mandate to be decided? After the Congress refused to budge, we did not see any reason not to field candidates from the same seats,” says RSP leader Kshiti Goswami.

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