All eyes are on the third phase of parliamentary elections in West Bengal as polling will be held in five key constituencies of Jangipur, Balurghat, Murshidabad, Maldaha Uttar and Maldaha Dakshin on Tuesday.
In Jangipur, the competition is getting tougher by the hour as Congress nominee and sitting MP Abhijiit Mukherjee is facing more aggressive and personal attack from the Trinamool Congress. In the run up to the polls, none other than Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee has slammed Abhijit Mukherjee more than once for his ‘failure’ as the lawmaker during his stint as an elected member since 2012.
It was in 2012 by-election first, Abhijit won on the Congress ticket after his father and the former President Pranab Mukherjee had vacated his seat. Even as Abhijit won the seat in 2016 state assembly polls again, the victory margin came down to a modest 2500. According to sources in the BJP and the Congress, the Mamata Banerjee-led outfit is indulging in ‘covert campaign’ trying to give out a repeated message that the RSS workers are working overtime to ensure victory of Mr Mukherjee.
“There is a cheap campaign by Trinamool on Abhijit Mukherjee being helped by RSS workers,” a local Congress worker said here adding “Mamata Banerjee and others are dragging the good office of former President Pranab Mukherjee into the electoral fray and trying to give a message that a large number of RSS workers are backing Abhijit”. This is “far from truth” – says BJP source. But some workers in the Congress admit at best it could be ‘half truth’ as somehow the BJP leaders are not targeting Abhijit Mukherjee personally.
“The reasons can be anything, but certainly not RSS-Pranab babu nexus. It is very low level campaign,” the Congress worker said. Sources said Trinamool leaders are regularly giving an impression that Pranab Mukherjee has tried to ‘cultivate’ the RSS by his attending a special RSS session in Nagpur last year.
“This is only an electoral strategy. Desperate Mamata Banerjee is trying to deprive Abhijit Mukherjee the minority votes. But it is sad that a leader of such a stature is doing so for a senior colleague and former President Pranabda,” says another local Congress leader Nimai Purkayastha in Umarpur – that falls under Jangipur. In Umarpur, a BJP worker also agreed to the point that the Trinamool Congress is trying to win over minority votes in this constituency by such campaigns.
“Notably, 50 per cent of voters in Jangipur make a particular religious group. Hence, while all eyes are on the star candidate and sitting Congress MP Abhijit Mukherjee, rest all three main parties – the Trinamool Congress, BJP and the CPI-M have fielded minority candidates,” he says. Certainly, this is not without good reasons. Mamata Banerjee’s candidate is Khalilur Rehman.
The BJP has fielded Mafooza Khatun – who has pledged to work for the welfare of the local Bidi workers. Mohammad Julfikar Ali of CPI-M talks about erosion in river Ganga and how it has hit the people in the region. He says both the Congress and Trinamool Congress have failed with their opportunistic approaches. But at times – the CPI-M leaders are faced with the ‘embarrassment’ and have to go defensive as the party leadership had undertaken seat adjustments with the Congress in 2016 assembly elections.
“Our experience is that the Congress benefited by such an alliance. They got our votes, but the Congress vote never got transferred, and we suffered,” says CPI-M worker Jishu Ghosh.
