TMC pries Cooch Behar door with Burman - Party sees strategy in supporting one-time statehood leader with dwindling hold

Ananta Rai Maharaj (left) and Bangshi Badan Burman in Calcutta on Thursday. 

Sandip Chowdhury and Meghdeep Bhattacharyya, TT, Calcutta, Oct. 27: Trinamul today announced it had the support of Bangshi Badan Burman, a leader of the Greater Cooch Behar movement whose support base has dwindled but in whom the party has found the first toehold in the movement.

With the support of Burman, who was the founding general secretary of the Greater Cooch Behar People's Association (GCPA) in 1998, Trinamul expects to consolidate its position in the Cooch Behar Lok Sabha seat, which it won in 2014 by a margin of 37,107 votes. A bypoll in the seat is scheduled for November 19 as it fell vacant after sitting MP Renuka Sinha's death.

The BJP has the support of Ananta Rai Maharaj, who leads the dominant faction of the GCPA and who is at loggerheads with Burman. In the Lok Sabha election, the BJP had fielded its district president Hem Chandra Burman, who got 2.17 lakh votes that was unexpected. Hem Chandra is the candidate this time too.

While the support extended by Burman has raised doubts of whether Trinamul would get the desired support of more Rajbangshis, the party's national vice-president Mukul Roy made the mission clear.

"We hope he would eventually bring Rajbangshis out of the fold of the Greater Cooch Behar movement," he said, indicating that the party would try to vertically split the statehood outfit in the long term.

"Burman's group has pledged its support to Trinamul. They do not ask for a separate state. We welcome their support," Roy said this afternoon at a news conference while Burman sat beside him.

The Rajbangshis form 51 per cent of the nearly 30-lakh population of Cooch Behar and a substantial majority of the movement that could support the BJP in the bypoll.

In order to chip away at this support base of the BJP, Trinamul, in a strategy its critics call "divide and rule", would try to do in Cooch Behar what it has done successfully in Darjeeling, party sources said.

In the hills, Trinamul backed small identity-based groups such as Lepchas, Gurungs, Tamangs and Sherpas to slowly weaken the hold of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha. Trinamul does not hold any elected post in the hills yet but it has managed to win over several communities. The Morcha's victory margins in the last Assembly elections reduced drastically.

What Mamata tried in Darjeeling with success, Trinamul also employed in Murshidabad later.

In Murshidabad, the ruling party started by engineering defections in small panchayat and civic bodies to weaken the Congress, to which the Opposition party did not pay much attention. But in a matter of months, Trinamul pulled the rug from beneath the Congress's feet to wrest control of most panchayat and civic bodies in the district.

"Burman's support is a first step in that direction... The strategy would be a mix of what we did in the hills and in Murshidabad," said a Trinamul source.

Asked why he chose to break away from the movement to support Trinamul, Burman said: "We don't want a separate state. We want development. The chief minister can bring us development."

The Rajbangshis, who call themselves desia or indigenous people, harbour deep resentment against bhatias or Bengali refugees from Bangladesh who settled and prospered in Cooch Behar and its neighbouring districts.

A princely state governed by a succession of 21 kings known as Koch rulers since the beginning of the 16th century, Cooch Behar merged with India in September 1949.

The movement - citing a clause in the merger signed by the government of India and the last independent king, Maharaja Jagaddipendra Narayan - fought for statehood for nearly two decades.

Like the Morcha in Darjeeling, the outfit's more popular faction has been pro-BJP in recent years as the national ruling party is seen to be in favour of the creation of smaller states.

Sources in the GCPA's dominant faction, which denies association with Burman, said he tilted towards Trinamul as he was denied a ticket by the BJP in the bypoll.

Additional reporting by Main Uddin Chisti