A graffiti seeking votes for the Opposition candidates

Behrampore, May 16: For a village panchayat in Murshidabad, the Trinamul Congress, Congress and the BJP have joined hands.

The alliance, apparently a result of a Trinamul initiative, defies the whip Trinamul chief Mamata Banerjee had issued against any electoral understanding with any party.

In the Hatinagar gram panchayat area, only 5km from Behrampore town, district Trinamul secretary Subodh Das said everybody was fed up with “the CPM’s corruption”.

“So, we all agreed to come together to defeat the CPM.”

In the 18-member village body, the CPM had won 15 seats in 2003. The Congress came a distant second with three.

Reminded about Mamata’s whip, Das said: “The alliance is the outcome of our local understanding. It is impossible to counter the CPM in the village unless we get united. We don’t mind the leadership’s flak. The alliance was born out of a political compulsion.”

The Congress’s Pratima Mondal and Trinamul’s Krishna Ghosh campaigned together for the Sunday poll with the BJP’s Rupatan Murari. “People blessed us everywhere for the unity,” said Krishna.

Hatinagar, with a population of over 1,000, has two seats. Pratima and Krishna are the Opposition candidates there.

Murari is fighting for the lone panchayat samiti seat.

A Trinamul leader in Calcutta said the leadership would not interfere in any local pact. “Our official stand is not to have any truck either with Congress or the BJP. But if grassroots leaders forge an alliance under pressure from villagers, we can’t help it.”

The Congress president of Hatinagar, Yuvaraj Singh, said: “We are determined to wrest the panchayat and that is why we have set aside our political ideologies.”

Shyam De, the CPM secretary of the Behrampore zonal committee, said the “political compulsion” the Opposition leaders spoke of was “a result of realisation that they were about to lose again”.