Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajiv Kumar’s letter to the Pakistan Cricket Board pleading that he would ensure full and effective security to the Pakistan cricket team, reveals the Trinamool Congress government’s desire to woo the Muslim community with less than a month before the state goes to the polls.
In the backdrop of a pre-poll understanding between the BJP and the TMC, which has not been disputed by either of the two parties, Kumar’s letter is politically loaded.It is an unabashed attempt to tell West Bengal’s nearly 30 percent Muslim population that the TMC continues to have their interests in mind.
Should the Pakistan team agree to play the World T20 match, which was earlier scheduled to be played in Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, it will fetch electoral gains to the TMC which, since coming to power in May 2011, has assiduously sought to expand its Muslim vote bank by weaning away a bulk of it from the Left Front.
Conversely, any India-Pakistan cricket match in poll-bound Bengal is likely to polarise the electorate across the state.
The presence of the Pakistani cricket team and the match, if held in Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, will give the BJP an opportunity to whip up passions, as it has done in the past too. India hosted Pakistan last in 2012 for a bilateral series of three ODIs and two T20s.
The series came after an almost 4-year lull when the earlier NDA regime under Atal Behari Vajpayee put cricketing ties with Pakistan in deep freeze after the Kargil war.
Since coming to power in West Bengal, the TMC has declared several sops for Muslims. Besides ruling that mosque imams would henceforth be salaried, the TMC government took a soft stance on hardliners’ complaint about growing number of madrasas across the state, especially in districts bordering Bangladesh.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)