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Bengal polls: First phase crucial for Left Front, Congress

KOLKATA: Polling began on Monday morning in 54 constituencies for the first of the six-phase assembly elections in West Bengal in which an electorate of 97.42 lakh will decide the fate of 364 candidates. Tight security arrangement has been made for a free, fair and peaceful polling in the constituencies spread across six north Bengal districts of Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, North Dinjapur, South Dinajpur and Malda. The 54 seats in the six districts of North Bengal could well hold the key to the Bengal assembly poll results. North Bengal, with less than a fifth of the 294 seats in the House, has never been this crucial to the state's election equation. The stakes are high for the ruling Left Front in the first phase of voting. Ten of its ministers are in the fray, chasing a high asking rate given the southward slide. This phase is also crucial for Congress which is desperate to bag enough seats to finish a decent second partner of the opposition alliance. And for Trinamool Congress, the question is of getting some bonus points in North Bengal to offset possible slips in south Bengal. Twenty-six of the 54 seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Tribes. There are three more in the Hills where identity politics Gorkha, Adivasi, Rajbanshi, Bihari holds the key. Most of these seats have Left Front MLAs whose fate has become uncertain with the Left's plummeting trade union strength in the tea gardens, throwing up new equations. The Left banks on a division of opposition votes in this region. But that is not likely to happen in some of the seats. If Gorkha and Adivasi votes go to the opposition, it can seal the fate of the Left in as many as 12 constituencies. Gorkha Janmukti Morcha leader Bimal Gurung has urged upon Gorkhas to vote for the Congress-Trinamool alliance. In some pockets, such as Nagrakata, Kalchini, Madarihat, Phansidewa and Fulbari-Dabgram, not to mention of the three Hill constituencies, the Left looks vulnerable. Identity politics apart, the winds of change in south Bengal have sent ripples in the so-called safe seats for Left, such as Siliguri, which remained unaffected in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. If one goes by the assembly segment tally of the Lok Sabha polls, only two of the 10 ministers Asok Bhattacharya and Paresh Adhikary would survive the reverses. All others are trailing by a margin ranging between 1,418 and 15,000 votes, according to the 2009 count. Ministers like Biswanath Chowdhury, Sailen Sarkar, Sreekumar Mukherjee and Anwarul Haque may be facing their toughest poll battle. The results of the Siliguri Municipal Corporation don't indicate a walkover for Asok Bhattacharya in Siliguri. Ministers like Kshiti Goswami and Kiranmay Nanda, who shifted to Alipurduar and Raiganj, after their constituencies (Dhakuria and Mugberia) in South Bengal were wiped out in delimitation, are swimming upstream, against a strong current. In this battle for survival, Congress is still fighting its own dissidents, especially in Uttar Dinajpur and Malda. Only one of the rebel independents in Malda has pulled out, despite the stern warning from the party leadership. Congress leader Deepa Das Munshi looks unfazed by the warning. She campaigned for the independent candidates in Hemtabad (SC) constituency even on Saturday, a day after Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee urged district leaders, in the presence of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, to refrain from such activities. The situation is no better in Malda. Bickering continues in Englishbazar though the Khan Chowdhury family has made an exception for Trinamool candidate Sabitri Mitra. The Left banks on this bickering and also on BJP in seats such as Englishbazar and Habibpur where the BJP's vote share ranges between 9% and 15.32% (from the assembly segment results in the Lok Sabha polls).

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