In Didi’s success story, a disappointment : Singur

“Even as we complete one year in office, I have a pain, a sadness in my mind — the Singur stalemate and the plight of the suffering farmers,” said West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee this afternoon while addressing the main programme to celebrate the first anniversary of the Trinamool Congress in the state.

“If any one asks what is my biggest dissatisfaction after a year in office, I will say it is the Singur farmers,” she said and went on to announce a relief scheme for farmers who are yet to back their land even after a prolonged struggle since 2006. She announced that such poor farmers will get Rs 1,000 each as relief grant every month and Rs 2 a kg rice for their families till the problem is sorted out. The local leaders have appealed to the government for such a scheme for such farmers, she said.

She explained that the Singur issue is now sub-judice. “We had acquired the land and the land is now vested with the government. But the case needs to be settled in the court of law before we can hand it back to the farmers.

“Apart from Singur it has been a story of smiles for the Darjeeling hills. The Junglemahal is smiling, too,” said Mamata Banerjee and went on to add emphatically: “We have conquered the wave. We have not got lost. We have survived.”

Winning the polls was one thing but to run the government under a virtual “financial emergency” was yet another great feat. “But we have done it. And we will do what we have promised,” said a beaming Chief Minister clad in what looked like a new designer black and white sari befitting the occasion.

The CM and the West Bengal Governor were flanked by the entire cabinet and central ministers and MPs from the Trinamool Congress.

The celebration was packaged as the “Festival of Progress” at the government fair ground off E M Bypass near Science City where government departments had set up pavilions and the Chief Minister went round some after the main function was over.

Speaking on the occasion, Mamata once again came down heavily on the 34-year Left rule in Bengal “during which all Bengali great personalities, from Rabindranath Tagore to Swami Vivekananda, from Kazi Nazrul Islam to Ramakrishna Praamhansa, were relegated to the background and forgotten”.

“The Trinamool Congress government has taken up the challenge to restore all these, the challenge to once again bring Bengal back to the path of growth and position of eminence and make it one of the leading states in India with development, reforms and restoration of confidence and self respect of the people in the state.

“Ever since I assumed office, I have not taken a day off. We are working together and we are committed to achieve prosperity and glory for Bengal ,” she said. She also released a book titled “Hope to Reality.”

Earlier, West Bengal Governor, the chief guest of the occasion, M K Narayanana described the occasion as “historic.” He said the state has a “dynamic leadership” under Mamata now and the government should be steadfast it achieving its goal of a “Sonar Bangla.” There have been promises of a “radiant future” in the past too, but Bengal ‘s tradition has suffered setback while democracy has been undermined in the past. He, therefore, warned that the action of the new government should not suffer in the same way.

He said the buzz word for the new government in Bengal has been “parivartan” and not “defeatism.” “Democracy is a combination of steps taken to galvanize development and progress,” he said and reminded “there are miles to go”. He, however, admitted that while perfection was elusive, a lot has been achieved by the new government.

President poll: Mamata Banerjee running out of options

Kolkata: Former President APJ Abdul Kalam's decision to withdraw from the Presidential race came as a huge shock to Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. This was the second blow in three days after her short-term friend Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav abandoned her to back Pranab. It now seems that the Trinamool Congress chief is running out of options.

The Trinamool Congress on Monday came up with a thinly veiled threat with party leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay saying, "We are with the government but can resign when the time comes."

After APJ Abdul Kalam himself ruled out his participation in the Presidential race, for Mamata, who was his most vociferous proponent, there was little to do but go back to political brinkmanship. Kalam's refusal is a big blow and Mamata wrote on Facebook, "Kalam Saheb...I have seen your statement that you are not contesting. This news has hurt us all deeply."

Having hedged her bets on Kalam, Mamata has already refused to back NCP leader PA Sangma's Presidential ambitions.

The Congress, meanwhile, is playing it cool. It even reached out by pulling up party general secretary Digvijaya Singh for criticising Mamata's stand on Pranab.

Congress leader Shakeel Ahmed said, "Mamata Banerjee was, is and will be a close ally of the UPA. I am hopeful that she will take lead in making Pranab Mukherjee victorious in President's race."

Mamata Banerjee is now left with few choices. Having said a firm no to Pranab Mukherjee, she can now either abstain from voting or side with the NDA, which also seems political improbable as she then would have to pull the plug on the UPA.

Mamata sweeps urban Bengal, but loses Haldia

Haldia verdict : Don't need new Lakshman

 Tanmoy Bhaduri

Haldia elected Lakshman Seth's wife but defeated someone who many feared would become his "worthy successor".
The biggest surprise of this round of civic elections is the inability ofTrinamul strongman Subhendu Adhikari to deliver the knockout punch on Lakshman, the toppled CPM satrap.

MAMATAA : SILENT PLEASE

Many hear in the stunning outcome an unmistakable declaration from Haldia that the industrial town does not want to risk the prospect of a new power centre replacing the already vanquished Lakshman who has been behind bars since March on a murder charge. Winning 15 of the 25 seats, the CPM has ensured that Lakshman's wife Tamalika Panda Seth will continue to head the Haldia municipality that has never been run by anyone else in the past 15 years.
This is not the ending that Subhendu, Trinamul's MP from Tamluk and the president of the party's youth wing, had envisaged as he piled one humiliation after another on the CPM since Nandigram erupted in 2008. Subhendu is part of the Adhikari political family whose presence is larger than that of Trinamul itself in East Midnapore. "Adhikari's attitude reminded us of Seth's dictatorial ways in his heyday. The people of Haldia did not want another Seth and it got reflected in the polls," said an industrialist who runs a business in petro-products in Haldia.
The Telegraph had reported last September how several industrialists had complained that the supporters of Subhendu were controlling the supply of manpower and materials to industrial units.
Two names that cropped up more than once then ' Azizur Rehman and Milon Mandal ' were among the losers in the civic elections. Subhendu as well as Rehman and Mandal had then denied any link to such activities and described the complaints as baseless.
The poll results reflect the depth of discontent in the factory belt: Trinamul has lost seven out of nine wards that comprise the industrial zone with units like Haldia Petrochemicals, Mitsubishi, Exide and Indian Oil.
In the 26-ward municipality as a whole, Trinamul, which had won six seats along with alliance partner Congress in 2007, has bagged 11 this time ' four less than the Assembly poll leads in the same wards.
Compared with the result in 2007, Trinamul has now gained in vote share. From 39.56 per cent that it got along with ally Congress, the share has gone up to 46.33 per cent.
But the failure in securing the civic board from the beleaguered Left stands out as a sore thumb in an otherwise unchallenged run by Trinamul.
"The victory in Haldia has come as a surprise to us… We had a tough time finding suitable candidates in all the wards as the organisational strength in our East Midnapore unit has depleted drastically in the past one year," said a CPM central committee member.

The lack of organisational might was evident in the run-up to the elections. The CPM could not organise big rallies in the absence of leaders like Lakshman and Amiya Sahoo, the district secretariat member who has also been arrested. The party's campaign ' led by Tamalika ' was low-key with focus on door-to-door initiatives and small meetings.
"I thank the people of Haldia for standing by us and rejecting those who had created an atmosphere of terror here," Tamalika, who was overwhelmed by the victory, told ABP Ananda after the results were announced.
Tamalika is likely to retain her post, which will allow her to control the Haldia Development Authority (HDA) as well. Together, the two agencies have a combined annual budget of over Rs 100 crore.
Although Subhendu has never held any post in the party's district hierarchy, he has been running the show in Haldia since the Nandigram protests broke out and the Left lost the zilla parishad in 2008.
"His (Subhendu's) main aim, however, was to run the show at the municipality and HDA…. In preparation, he became the president in almost all the Trinamul-held labour unions and inducted his men as working presidents to control the key decisions in those units," said a businessman.
According to him, Subhendu was following the same model that Lakshman had fine-tuned as he rose from an ordinary party worker to the most influential leader in Haldia.
The slide of the CPM in Haldia ' and also in other parts of East Midnapore ' was linked to the politics of Lakshman, who had become a law unto himself.
The verdict showed the people of Haldia had rejected the same brand of politics, which Subhendu was accused of trying to champion."People of Haldia have disapproved Trinamul's high-handed approach and the results clearly reflect that," said Om Prakash Mishra, PCC general secretary.
The defeat is more likely to be attributed to Subhendu than Trinamul as, unlike in other places in Bengal, Haldia has not been under the direct control of Mamata Banerjee.
Some Trinamul insiders said Adhikari had a free run in Haldia as he had promised Mamata to take the civic board from CPM. During a public spat between Seuli Saha, the Trinamul MLA from Haldia, and Subhendu over nomination of candidates for the civic polls, the party backed the young MP and gave preference to his list of nominees.
"There are at least three wards where Seuli's candidates were replaced with those of Subhendu, and the party lost in all three of them. Internal feud cost us dear in Haldia.… Had we presented a united face, the results could have been different," said a party leader.
Subhendu conceded that internal differences ' which became public when Seuli held a media conference and spoke out against the MP ' did affect his party's fortunes in the civic polls.
"Public statements by some leaders have adversely hit our fortunes…. I didn't discuss it before and neither will I do it now," Adhikari said at a public rally in Haldia late this evening, where he said he wanted to resign as the president of the Trinamul Youth Congress.
"A lot of people had said that this election was my fight against the CPM and I admit it. But let me assure all of you that I will give a fitting reply in the panchayat polls," he said.


On the other hand, the Congress's Shankar Singh has "bounced back'' with the Cooper's Camp municipal election that has put 11 of the 12 wards into the Congress kitty. Singh's "achievement'', said a PCC leader, is all the more striking as the Congress had to face opposition from Trinamul. Here, the Left couldn't even hold on to the lone seat it had got in 2007.

Trinamul marches on, CPM still paralysed

Tanmoy Bhaduri

The results of the elections to six municipalities in Bengal show that the Left is not an option, at least not yet, in spite of perceived disenchantment among sections of society over some of the policies and actions of the Mamata Banerjee government.

PLAYING  BUDDHA

The cumulative outcome suggests that the Trinamul Congress is still riding on the graph that had emerged in the last panchayat elections, crystallised in the Lok Sabha polls and peaked in the Assembly elections last year. Haldia is an exception to the pattern, where Trinamul failed to take the civic body from the Left. The Trinamul setback is being attributed largely to a backlash from many voters who saw in Trinamul MP Subhendu Adhikari's rise the emergence of another Lakshman Seth. However, the overall results show that the Left continues to be in the middle of a losing streak and has not managed to make any turnaround in the past one year, having lost in five of the six civic bodies that went to the polls on Sunday. Not only has the Left lost the Panskura and Nalhati municipalities as it did in 2007, it also failed to retain the Dhupguri civic body and, more important, the Durgapur Municipal Corporation this time.

CPM state secretariat member Mohammad Salim said of the continued defeats that the Left has been facing over the last few years: "It's true that a pattern had come up in the 2008 panchayat polls and it has been going on in successive elections…. We have not been able to make any recovery in the last one year of Mamata Banerjee's misrule."

Salim sought solace in the Haldia win. "It at least put a pause on the Trinamul's advance, particularly given the political atmosphere in which we faced the elections there,'' the CPM leader said. In the 2008 rural elections, the Left lost as many as 50 per cent of the 50,000 odd gram panchayat seats and four zilla parishads to Trinamul and the Congress, although there wasn't any alliance between the two parties.

A repeat performance unfolded in the 2010 municipal elections when, again without any alliance between Trinamul and the Congress, the Left's tally came down from 60 to 17 of the 81 civic bodies that went to the polls then. Results of this municipal poll reaffirm Trinamul's unrelenting march forward, that too without having the Congress as an electoral partner, while the Left continues to flounder in defeat. Buoyed by the success, Trinamul claimed it was toying with the idea of "going it alone" in the next elections. "We have won these civic bodies single-handed and can contest polls alone in the future," said  Mukul Roy, the Trinamul all-India general secretary. A CPM leader said although there was "discontent" among some sections of the people over certain actions of Mamata, the poll results did not reflect it.

State Congress general secretary Om Prakash Mishra said the results showed "all's not well". "It may be too early to say that there is disenchantment with Trinamul but there is little doubt that all is not well with the way they are running the show. The results indicate that the three major parties have proportionately distributed the pain and pleasure," Mishra said. Most worrying for the Left, Trinamul has shown that its earlier breach of Red Durgapur was not a flash in the pan. The Left had won the Durgapur Assembly bypoll in 2010 even after its humiliating defeat in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. However, in the 2011 Assembly polls, the Left trailed in as many as 33 of the 43 wards of the Durgapur municipal corporation and lost both the seats from the steel township.

This time, there hasn't been much of a change in the electoral graph ' the Left has lost in 32 wards after being in power ever since the corporation was formed 15 years ago.

In Panskura, a significant positive for Trinamul has been its ability to get a majority on its own by reducing the Left's tally and wiping out the Congress that has drawn a blank this time. Earlier, Trinamul was forced to form and run the Panskura board with Congress support.