Troubled time ahead for TMC leaders: EC

SNS, Siliguri, 18 March 2014: Trinamul Congress leaders have now landed in hot water, and how. They don’t know how they will save some of their party activists from the police who are after them following guidelines issued by the Election Commission. 

In their bid to conduct free and fair Lok Sabha elections, the local administration and the police, in a vulnerability mapping report submitted to the Election Commission, have listed many names of ‘trouble makers’ who presently belong to the ruling party. 

Both the police and the ruling party are in a fix when it comes to executing the EC’s guidelines. 

Interestingly, many Trinamul activists, who recently joined the ruling party from other political parties, are having to face an embarrassing situation. 

The case in Matigara in Siliguri may be enough to describe the situation in the whole of north Bengal as well as other districts in south Bengal, where there was an exodus of people joining the TMC from the Congress, the CPI-M and other political parties. 

The report given to the EC marks Matigara as a vulnerable area, as many leaders from the CPI-M and the Congress joined the Trinamul Congress after the change of guard in the state. 

Priyanka Biswas, the present pradhan of the Matigara gram panchayat, and her father, and other senior family members were associated with the CPI-M earlier. Later, the father,

Nantu Biswas, joined the Congress and then joined hands with the Trinamul. 

Opponent political party activists lodged a complaint with the police in 2009 against them (when they were with the CPI-M), saying they were trouble makers and they were threatening voters. 

Based on the complaint, those persons (though they now belong to the Trinamul) are trouble mongers in the eye of the Election Commission. And the police are now supposed to act as per the EC guidelines. 

Asked to comment, the Siliguri Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Jag Mohan, said: “We did not receive any complaint against Priyaka Biswas in the last three months.” Mr Mohan, however, did not comment on the matter in detail. Darjeeling district CPI-M working secretary Jibesh Sarkar said: “I should not comment on the fate of some leaders who frequently change political parties.” 

Darjeeling district Trinamul Congress general secretary Krishna Pal said the law will take its own course. “We did not lodge complaints against Priyanka Biswas saying she and her associates barred us from campaigning during the polls,” Mr Pal said.