In Birbhum you have to pay for the service you get. Pay with your votes or your names will be struck off BPl, APl, disability benefits, MNREGA and all other Government facilities. And listen again! There are 1,032 votes… 850 will be polled. It is easy to calculate who voted (for us) and who did not. Go in pairs to vote and watch your buddy’s vote.”
That is how Abdul Mannan, district vice-president of Trinamool Congress, seeks votes from a 1,000-strong gathering at luvpur. Mannan is one of the nine gems hand-picked by Anubrata Mandal, district TMC president, the blue-eyed boy of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, for his inimitable organisational prowess.
like Mannan one Ghosh Babu charged with murder, bombing and rioting takes care of Khairasole. His fellow Jaffarul Islam, charged with murder is in charge of Ilambazar.
Similarly Abdul Karim oversees Nanoor, Jatil Mandal tends to TMC interests at Sainthia Abhijit Singh looks after Bolpur, Mustaq Hussein caters to Parui and so on.
One of them is charged with 27-28 murders and the police can do nothing to them for the fear of their own lives, you are told by the driver as you drive off Bolpur town towards luvpur-Nanoor where a group of villagers was attacked by a Trinamool bikers’ gang for supporting CPI(M) candidate Shyamali Mandal.
Curiously when in Birbhum, people take Keshtoda’s (Anubrata) name in a hushed voice and not before looking carefully around.
Alok Hazra of Bolpur says, “If we have known Keshto one bit then take it from me, anything can happen on Sunday. Many people will have to flee their villages from the evening, women will be raped, children orphaned, limbs broken. And if such things happen EC will be held responsible for its leniency.”
Even as you approach luvpur you find not a single Central force personnel otherwise supposed be on area domination. You are informed by the driver Ratan about how the whole district has been literally mined by Trinamool men.
“Drums full of bombs are hidden under ground along the roads for emergency situations. If the opposition voters come in hordes the drums will be opened, bombs charged to scare them away” he says. But are not the CRPF supposed to dominate the area!
“They do so but only the highways. Interiors are left on the mercy of the Trinamool goons. If proper voting is done in Birbhum Trinamool will come only third after left and Congress. BJP is strong in Mayureshwar. But in areas like Parui an Ilambazar the party is gradually showing decline on account of a steady flight towards the left,” he says.
Each of Mandal’s men has been asked to garner a lead of between 30-40 thousand votes. Birbhum is the zone and many of Mandal’s lieutenants were the men who brought musketeers and bombers to fight mini battles with BJP at Makhra, Chowmandalpur, Ilambazar.
At Janjna Nagar village in Nanoor you are literally mobbed by about five hundred people all screaming unaudibly. “We have been beaten up, our houses looted, our women threatened with rape if we go out to vote tomorrow (on Sunday) by a bikers’ gang of Trinamool Congress. They were about 20 in number all armed with lathis and guns” scream villagers.
What is more terrifying the TMC goons came in army fatigues apparently to avoid easy detection by the police or for that matter CRPF.
“They beat up Dilip Mandal a polling agent from luvpur. He has been sent to hospital at Bolpur” tells a villager his face stiffens. “But we will go to vote in more numbers. Come what may.
Incidentally, luvpur was home to novelist Tarashankar one of the favourite writers of Satyajit Ray, medieval poet Jaidev who wrote Geet Govind. Enamoured by the red earth Tagore also made Bolpur (Shantiniketan) his home. “But that red earth is reddened by the likes of Keshto” says Netai Das a CPI(M) worker.
At Baheri you get down to speak to people but none would open up. The cold horror is very much visible even as men in dark glasses follow you wherever you move. A grocer where you fetch a cola requesting anonymity says “you cannot talk to your wife even because even the walls have ears. We are fully strangulated and barely can breathe.
They have told us that they will cut our water connection like they did at Pandaveshwar in Burdwan. It is 44 degrees. We can’t risk things. But if central forces then only we will move out.”
True. Scorching it is with sun beating down fiercely and Anubrata Mandal repeatedly threatening to “beat the drums” (attack opposition voters) in the evening.
“At Siuri,” a fellow journalist tells “we asked him in the morning as to whether he would confine indoors as per the orders of the Election Commission” which has interned (nazarband) him under 24-hours surveillance, he said “I am free man, will do my routine work. I will go about the whole constituencies.”
Indeed Mandal defying ECI orders toured a full 150 km from Nalhati, to Dubrajpur via Murarai, Tarapeeth, Rampurhat etc, sources said adding at every places he was received by “crucial” party men with whom he held close-door meetings making the Deputy Magistrate and the CRPF to sit outside. This, in utter violation of the EC orders directing him to be under surveillance camera barring his private moments.
Mandal and his private army dominated the whole district unlike the Central forces and not an observer observed.