Cooch Behar ready for close contest

Udayan Guha and Akshay Thakur

rAvijit Sinha, TT, Cooch Behar, May 4: The district is gearing up for a close fight between Forward Bloc and Trinamul nominees with the former trying to win back its bastion and the latter trying to bag it like last time.

As around 21 lakh go to the 1,858 booths tomorrow for the final phase of the Assembly elections, both Trinamul and the Left have their eyes set on the maximum number of seats in the district that is farthest from Calcutta in terms of distance - around 750km.

Unlike most of the districts in the state where the CPM is the strongest Left constituent, the Forward Bloc is ahead of other Left allies here.

"But the Bloc and its allies, including the Congress, are facing a major challenge," a senior Bloc leader said.

"We had managed to secure four of the nine seats (in the district) in 2011 and could retain most of the support base in these places. But there are a number of Assembly seats where in the past five years, the support base of the CPM and the Congress depleted and party supporters became inactive."

Cooch Behar has nine Assembly segments and in 2011, Trinamul and the Forward Bloc had won four seats each and the Congress had won one. In the 2014 Parliament polls, Trinamul had won.

Talking about some recent developments, the leader sounded optimistic. "In the past two-three months, there has been a change. In seats like Tufanganj, Mathabhanga and Natabari, where the Left or the Congress supporters did not dare to take out a rally or host a meeting due to a weak support base and Trinamul's attacks, several supporters of both the parties have now started coming out of their homes. Unlike the civic polls last year, they could campaign this time," he said.

Trinamul has fielded Udayan Guha and the Left-Congress alliance nominee is Bloc's Akshay Thakur.

While lack of support base is bothering the Left and the Congress, "overcrowding" of leaders and supporters leading to sharp differences in the party is the principal deterrent for Trinamul.

"We are not bothered about our contenders. But the key problem that we have to deal with is internal differences. Our district president Rabindranath Ghosh and another leader, Mihir Goswami, both of whom are contesting, do not see eye to eye. Some leaders don't like Udayan Guha (who switched to Trinamul from the Bloc in October last year) and they are not ready to work for him. There have been negative campaigns against some of our candidates who spoke against each other in close quarters," a district Trinamul leader said. "Leaders of different lobbies are sceptical..."

Insiders said, during the campaigns this time, district Trinamul leaders have spoken against each other openly.

"The situation became so acute that none other than Mamata Banerjee had to intervene. It is well understood that the party supremo is also worried about this rivalry and she held six public meetings in the past two days to bring these leaders together," said a source.

"At these meetings, she had to tell party leaders that all of them should work together and she wants all of them to win," he added.

Among the Trinamul candidates, four are former Bloc leaders, including Guha. Three others, Arghya Roy Pradhan, Hiten Burman and Jagadish Chandra Burma Basunia, are contesting Mekhliganj, Sitalkuchi and Sitai, respectively.

Rabindranath Ghosh, the Trinamul district president, said: "We will win more seats than 2011. There is no major difference among us other than some minor issues. Even those have been settled."

The district has 21,36,309 voters and 9,776 of them are first-time voters. "They are residents of erstwhile enclaves," an administrative source said.