He wears a long and luxurious grey beard. The black, plastic eyeglass frames are a throwback to the 1950s. His attire is simple: a white kurta and a chequered lungi and a pair of frayed leather sandals.
His gentle mien and demeanour are of a humble Bengali school teacher from the rural backwaters of central Bengal. Meet Kajal Sheikh of Nanur in Birbhum district, once known as the “land of the red soil.”
Warring Factions of TMC
Birbhum’s soil is indeed a blazing red, but its political colour changed in 2011 when Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress vanquished the CPI(M)-led Left Front, taking seven of the 11 assembly constituencies in the district.
The TMC’s twin flowers replaced the dreaded – and hated – kaaste-haaturi-tara (sickle-hammer-star) as the most visible symbol of the sweeping change across much of Bengal. But Birbhum continued to remain on the boil as the TMC struggled to come to terms with internecine warfare.
Illegal Sand Mining
The two warring factions were represented by the corpulent Anubrata Mandal, who spewed venom at the rump CPI(M) district leadership, threatening to bomb its cadres to death, and Kajal Sheikh, a fiercely independent TMC worker with interest in sand mining in the dry bed of the Ajoy river.
Within two years of ousting the CPI(M) from Birbhum, Mandal and Kajal had turned against each other, competing for the spoils of power. But the bitterness between the two reached a level that forced Kajal Sheikh to part ways with the TMC.
The pressure against Kajal was so intense that, with several cases of murder and attempt to murder, besides other pending criminal cases, against him, he was forced to severe his ties with the TMC. Kajal “informally” defected to the Congress, with the party’s Murshidabad MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, providing him shelter.
Kazi Nazrul Huda, a TMC Anchal Pradhan from Rooppur under Bolpur assembly constituency, which Mandal represents, said:
Kajal has been on the run for a while. We have been trying to re-establish contact with him. The TMC leadership desperately wants him back now as Birbhum goes to polls on 17 April.Kazi Nazrul Huda
TMC’s Mistakes
Huda, who makes no bones of his dislike for Mandal, candidly admits that his party has made mistakes in Birbhum in the five years that it has been in power. He assigns two broad reasons why the TMC may have an uphill task this time.
First, the TMC allowed into its fold other party members with criminal antecedents, who are now proving a liability.
Secondly, and more importantly, flush after tasting victory, many TMC district-level workers “could not resist the temptation to take to corrupt practices,” Huda said, referring to the errant party workers’ involvement in “making money” in MNREGA and fisheries schemes.
Weakening Grip in Birbhum
Mamata’s immediate focus after the 2011 victory was to widen and deepen the spoils system which kept her workers happy while helping her party to make inroads into areas under the CPI(M)’s control.
Huda and other local TMC workers admit that the most debilitating reason behind the Trinamool’s weakening grip over Birbhum has been factional war which erupts in regular intervals over the “share of the loot.” The most sought-after site is the dry bed of the Ajoy river in Notunhaat in Burdwan district.
With the mercury soaring, labourers toil hard to fill truck after truck with the precious sand. A truck-full of sand sells for Rs 15,000 at the spot. The lucrative trade and its returns finances not just the person who has control over it, but also the party which is ever so much in need of money to fund elections.
“The fight between Anubrata Mandal’s follower Gadadhar Hajra, the TMC nominee for Nanur assembly seat, and Kajal Sheikh is basically over control of the Ajoy river’s bed,” said Alam Sheikh whose house in Nanur is next to the CPI(M) party office.
Alam recollects the massacre by CPI(M) cadres of 11 landless labourers (who were TMC supporters) in Suchpur, near Nanur, in July 2000. The gruesome killings left a deep imprint on the minds of the local people who never forgave the CPI(M). A series of “terror tactics” were employed by the CPI(M) through 2005, paving the way for a TMC victory in Nanur in the 2011 elections.
Today, the TMC’s control over Nanur has slackened to the extent that even party sources in Birbhum admit that the “going will be tough this time in many of the 11 constituencies.”
At the run-down Nanur CPI(M) office, which operates from the house of the party’s zonal committee secretary Hasibur Rahman, workers have new-found enthusiasm to campaign, which was unthinkable three months ago.
Tough Contest for Didi
The alliance with the Congress has certainly emboldened us, but party workers are now being able to go from village to village to campaign,” Rahman said. The people’s disenchantment with the TMC is not limited to Nanur.
In a span of just five years, Mamata’s party of poriborton is stuck in a mire whose making is attributed to the CPI(M)-led Left Front. In seats across Birbhum – Seuri, Nalhati, Sainthia and others – the common refrain is of a “tough contest” this time when in 2011 these seats were a cakewalk for Mamata.
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