By IANS,
Kolkata : He may be used to easy wins from the till now red bastion of Jadavpore, but the odds this time are stacked against West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who is contesting for the sixth consecutive time from a constituency going to the polls Wednesday.
Bhattacharjee switched to the urban constituency in the city’s southern outskirts in 1987, five years after suffering his only electoral defeat from North Kolkata’s Cossipore. He has since won five consecutive elections over 24 years, every time with huge margins.
In the last election, the chief minister had left behind his nearest rival by a staggering 58,130 votes. But even Bhattacharjee’s most ardent supporters are not thinking about a repeat.
Jadavpore, a part of the South 24 Parganas district, is one constituency that has always gone the Left way, irrespective of the ups and down in the fortunes of West Bengal’s ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) elsewhere.
The previous winners from the seat include Bhattacharjee’s mentor Dinesh Majumdar, Shankar Gupta and former state finance minister Ashok Mitra in a by-poll in 1983.
The chief minister has in the past humbled non-political candidates like “Charulata” Madhabi Mukherjee, the heroine of Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece, and former bureaucrat Dipak Ghosh.
This time, the main challenge for the seasoned politician comes from another retired bureaucrat Manish Gupta, who was chief secretary during the early days of Bhattacharjee’s tenure as chief minister.
The 13 contenders in the contest also include former Marxist Samit Putatunda, the one-time powerful secretary of CPI-M’s South 24 Parganas unit. He is from the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS).
The changing scenario in the constituency came to the fore in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls when CPI-M’s Sujon Chakraborty found his lead whittled down, to ultimately lose to Trinamool’s Kabir Suman in the Jadavpore seat.
The condition turned more precarious for the Marxists in the civic polls last year when they aggregated about 700 votes less than the opposition candidates in the 10 wards, which make the assembly constituency with a total electorate of 253,932, a majority of them women.
Faced with a massive erosion of support, the chief minister has been taking no chances. Ignoring barbs from the opposition, he has mainly concentrated on Jadavpore, meeting the people, conducting roadshows, holding street corners and addressing big public meetings.
“Our first success during the campaign is that we have confined him to the constituency. He is apprehensive about his chances,” said front-ranking Trinamool leader and former city mayor Subrata Mukherjee.
However, Bhattacharjee denies that he was treading on thin ice.
“People of Jadavpore know me, my party. They have been electing me for so many years. I go their round the year. It is not that I am paying special attention to the constituency because of the polls,” he told mediapersons.
In his campaign speeches, Bhattacharjee is seeking another chance — for himself and his party. It remains to be seen how much he can sway the voters who will exercise their franchise in the third phase of the state elections Wednesday.