Battle of Buttons
The cat is out of the bag now. The fact has come to light that a man named Sudhir Kumar Rakesh was, brought in West Bengal as a Special Observer. About him, the vocal allegation is that he is very close to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Prasad Yadav. The allegations further includes that Trinamool Congress’ (TMC), MP KD Singh was sent to his residence at Patna to see Rakesh and strike a deal with him so that the TMC could perform in the election according to their blueprint. The allegations also claimed that the deal was successfully done. Who is this KD Singh? He has minted money primarily through chit fund business and then, of course, he has diversified his business. It is again alleged that Mamata Banerjee’s nephew has married daughter of KD Singh.
The other part of the game plan was to activate the process of rigging, booth capturing and polling Chhappa votes. On April 30, as alleged by the Opposition parties of West Bengal, under the leadership of Anubrata, Arabul, Manirul Islam, etc the so called Harmad Brigade of CPM, who have joined TMC batch by batch to save their skin from the ire of Didi, came down on voters with lethal weapons. The procedure of this kind of action is familiar to voters as well as to those Harmads. Didi was very happy with the successful execution of the game plan and then thundered, “BJP would draw a Big Zero in this election in West Bengal”.
After third phase, their calculation was to get 9 seats. But, they became apprehensive when the road show of Modi took place in Srirampore, where the BJP candidate is Bappi Lahiri and win-win situation has been created. So, the ruling party has come down upon the election system so heavily that all equations have been changed overnight.
Modi Storms Nehru-Gandhi Bastion
The fate of 23 seats is scheduled to be decided in the remaining two phases. Some political observers say that, TMC may get 12 seats, Left Front 12, Congress 4 and BJP 1. If the calculation of the observers is taken for granted then Left Front and TMC cannot get 12 each. Then, among the remaining 23 seats to bag at least 18 seats is an impossible proposition because of the following reasons: One, much hue and cry during the third election over rigging and booth capturing. Although, Central Election Commission has not yet (till this write-up is prepared) declared its decision on taking repoll in 43 booths where polling has been vandalised as complained by the political parties. But they have cognisance of the matter. Two, the silver lining in this matter is that the Central Election Commission has accepted the allegation of “flawed deployment forces” in different booths. Three, they have accepted the demand of deploying more paramilitary forces in the State during the elections in remaining two phases. Another 15,000 paramilitary forces are coming to the State during the last two phases of election. 35,000 paramilitary forces are already there to monitor the elections. Lastly, there will be strict monitoring of State Election Commission’s activities and the State administration.
Even after the fifth phase of election, the comrade’s company of Prakash Karat-Sitaram Yechury-Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee-Biman Bose is still singing the old tune TMC and BJP is playing a “got-up” game to make people and other political parties fools. The simple reason for this is, according to this company, both BJP and TMC will join hands and run the administration. Again, the Lefts are still propagating that the BJP and other partners of NDA will not get majority to form a government on their own. So TMC would jump in to help NDA or for that matter the BJP.
After the completion of 8th phase (for West Bengal it is 5th phase) of polling some political pundits are saying that for the last nearly one Mamata has become mad. Naturally BJP would be gainer in the election. But, Modi did not spare Didi for all her allegations against Modi. Modi in his last phase of tour in the state had given pointed answers to all her allegations.
Asim Kumar Mitra
