It is well past evening. And it is raining cats and dogs. A few dozen umbrellas that have been unfolded do a U-turn in the face of strong winds. But the 500-strong assemblage, including a bevy of women, refuses to budge as they listen with rapt attention to what Hasnat da has to say.
Abul Hasnat is a doctor. But, at present, he is the CPI(M) candidate from Diamond Harbour lok Sabha seat contesting against Abhishek Banerjee, the nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Seasoned campaigner Somen Mitra, a rebel Trinamool MP, left the party and the seat to join back the Congress which he headed for many years in the 90s.
Though the suave looking Banerjee carries the name of his illustrious Pisi (maternal aunt) he has been facing an uphill task due to the Saradha scam after effects. Before leaving, Mitra has dealt two lethal blows to the high command: He has been instrumental in burrowing holes in the Chief Minister’s virtuous image first by waging a letter war in the multi-crore Saradha scam and then allegedly providing leads into the large-scale bungling in last year’s Teachers Eligibility Test that affected about 20 lakh candidates.
“The two major scams and many minor ones involving a few hundred crores have torn asunder the honesty cult woven around Mamata Banerjee” says South 24 Parganas CPI(M) district secretary Sujan Chakrabarty, himself a candidate from Jadavpur seat.
“Saradha is a big issue in Diamond Harbour. Trinamool had no right to take our money like this. We voted them to power en masse but they have cheated us,” says Akram Ali Mollah an agent at Saharar Haat, who has sunk his Rs 4 lakh along with Rs 10 lakh of his depositor clients.
Ashok Charan Biswas of Budge Budge Assembly constituency which is a part of Diamond Harbour holds a similar view. “Why should we vote for those who have cheated usIJ We will vote for Congress, BJP, CPI(M) or anyone but not this lady,” he says indicating the weight of Mamata Banerjee’s so called honesty seems to be telling on her nephew’s political career.
This Assembly segment has the highest number of Trinamool vote. It gave a whopping lead of more than 50,000 to the party in 2011. The remaining six seats barring Metiabruz from where the Trinamool won by a meagre 5,000 votes the ruling party averaged a lead of about 24,000-plus votes.
Diamond Harbour stretches from sea to Kolkata. While the southernmost part of the constituencies kisses the Bay of Bengal at the Ganga Sagar Islands Assembly segments like Budge Budge, Maheshtala, Metiabruz and parts of Satgachia form very much a part of southernmost fringes of Kolkata. Other three Assembly seats are Bishnupur, from where the Saradha rose, Falta and Diamond Harbour proper.
“They have criminalised politics as no one did before” says Aziz at Metiabruz the area which hit the headlines for the broad daylight murder of a police officer in a college election last year. The mastermind a local Trinamool leader and Kolkata Corporation councillor Munna Iqbal is out on bail and is actively campaigning for his party.
With the region having more than 40 per cent Muslim population and with Banerjee’s overdose of minoritism the RSS is fast gaining popularity in the area, says Hasib Ali, a local professor adding the BJP was in a good position here. “Though they might not win they will get huge number of votes mostly coming from the Trinamool and some from the CPI(M),” he said. BJP’s Abhijit Das is contesting from the area. A traditional left bastion CPI(M)’s Samik lahiri won the seat by a margin of about 1.55 lakh votes in 2004. Riding the Mamata wave, Somen Mitra bagged the seat in 2009 by a margin of 1.54 lakh votes. In 2011 Assembly elections, the Trinamool wrested all the seven seats from the left.
But since then the situation has been changing fast. First, on account of the Congress coming out of Mamata’s alliance, second, increasing crimes and scams, and third, the meteoric rise of the BJP in the area.
Biswanath Mondal, a hotlier from Diamond Harbour, grumbles against the regular Haftas he has to pay the local Trinamool goons. “In the left days we had to give Rs 100 a month to the local committee of the CPI(M), but now there is no limit. They extract thousands of rupees in phases. As they have many groups you have to pay them all or else your shop will be shut down.”
But his neighbour Rathin Das says, “The Trinamool has constructed roads and saved us from CPI(M) harmads,” adding, “Mamata is a victim of Opposition conspiracy.” However, Shampa Basak from Maheshtala rues rising crime against women. “Earlier we could return well past 10 in the night. But these days we have to get back by 6 pm,”
she says, adding only Maheshtala has witnessed more than a dozen rapes in the past one year. Finally, Muslim vote of the Chief Minister seems to be betraying her. “The Bengali Muslims are not happy with her as she has only held out promises and done nothing for them,” says Hamir Ali. Repeated attacks on the Pir Zada Twaha Siddiqi of Furfura Sharief by alleged Trinamool men because of his criticism of Banerjee have also not gone down well among the Bengali Muslims.
Furfura Sharief is the biggest congregation of Muslims in Bengal and the second biggest after Ajmer Sharief in the country. With the minorities alienating whether the tiger she road chews Didi up this time or whether her alleged election machinery saves the day for her remains to be seen.