By IANS
Kolkata : The industrial township of Haldia in West Bengal was recaptured Wednesday by the Left Front that won 19 of the 26 seats where a high-voltage municipal election was held July 22 in the shadow of the violent clashes in neighbouring Nandigram.
While the Trinamool Congress won six seats, an ally of the party – People's Democratic Conference of India (PDCI) – secured one, taking the total opposition tally to seven. The PDCI was formed by Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind leader Siddiqullah Choudhury.
The municipality election in East Midnapore district had become politically significant because it was the first after the violent clashes in Nandigram – just across the river from Haldia – over acquisition of agricultural land for industry.
The Haldia civic poll was made a prestige issue by the two sides with the Left Front claiming that the win reflected people's mandate for industrialisation.
Interestingly, Trinamool Congress won in the seats that fell in the rural belt around the township, about 125 km from Kolkata, in the confluence of Haldi and Hooghly rivers. Haldia has emerged as a centre of development with global companies like Mitsubishi setting up plants there.
"I am happy that we could win despite a virulent campaign by the opposition who resorted to slander and intimidation. This is a mandate for industrialisation," said Haldia municipality chairperson Tamalika Panda Seth.
Tamalika is the wife of Haldia strongman and Member of Parliament Laxman Seth, who was largely held responsible for the spiralling violence in Nandigram.
"This time even Jamiat leader Siddiquallah Choudhury resorted to a communal campaign. However, the people voted for industrialisation," said Laxman Seth, chairman of Haldia Development Authority (HAD).
"I still think that the people of Nandigram also want industry," he said.
Haldia witnessed a peaceful but high-voltage municipal election Sunday with an 81 percent turnout. A total of 55 candidates vied for the 26 municipal wards that have an electorate of 97,512.
With a population of 170,695, Haldia is a port town and growing industrial hub in West Bengal where the Left Front now wants to relocate the chemical plant complex that was originally planned in Nandigram, but which triggered a chain of violence over land acquisition that has claimed about 22 lives so far, many in the March 14 police firing.
Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd, a naphtha-based petrochemical complex jointly promoted by West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, the Chatterjee Petrochem (Mauritius) Company Ltd and the Tata Group, is one of the showpiece industrial projects of the Left Front government.
For the municipality poll, Trinamool Congress, Congress, the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) and the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind had formed an alliance to battle the CPI-M, with the Trinamool Congress fighting in 18 seats followed by the Congress in six.
The Left Front had secured all the seats in the last Haldia municipal election.
Communist patriarch and former chief minister Jyoti Basu had predicted a Left Front victory in Haldia municipal election, but he too had expressed doubt about a clean sweep like last time.
Only a few months ago, the Left Front faced an unprecedented debacle in the Panskura civic poll, another East Midnapore constituency, following the Nandigram clashes.