A barber at work on Ghosh’s hair in front of his house in Kholta. Picture by Main Uddin Chisti

Cooch Behar, May 23: The keyboard today played to the beat of kettledrums and priests chanted mantras as a barber put his scissors to work on Santosh Chandra (Ronu) Ghosh’s hair after 25 years.

A Congress party member from Kholta, Santosh had promised back in 1983 that he would have a proper haircut and a shave only when the CPM was voted out of power from the Marichbari-Kholta gram panchayat. Today, he shed the hair that had grown almost half-way down his back.

“Back in 1983, I lost to CPM candidate Rajen Ghosh by a margin of 31 votes from the Kholta 4/33 seat. I had then promised that I would cut my hair and shave only if the CPM was voted out from that seat,” Santosh, who is now 65 years old, said. The entire Kholta village, 25km from here, knew about his pledge.

Local Congress leader Khitish Chandra Roy recalled that in 2003, when he won from the same seat where Santosh had been defeated, he had asked Ronuda to have a haircut. “But he refused, saying that the gram panchayat was still under the CPM,” Roy said. Last time, of the 23 seats, the CPM had secured 20 and the Congress two. The remaining one seat had been won by an Independent.

This year, Niyati Ghosh, the CPM candidate in the Kholta 4/33 seat, was defeated by the Congress-backed Independent, Sabitri Roy. The number of seats has been reduced to 20. The Congress has got four, Trinamul Congress five and the Independents (including Sabitri) four. The CPM was left with just seven seats. All the Independents were backed by the Congress.

The barber’s job done, Congress supporters who had already celebrated with gulal (not the usual green colour associated with the party, but the one with a pink hue), set off towards the house of forest minister Ananta Roy of the CPM, who lives in the same village.

“For all these years, the CPM leaders, during each and every poll, taunted Ronuda, saying that the poor man would never be able to have a haircut as the party was here to stay forever. Now it is payback time,” a Congress supporter said.

The forest minister said he was too disgusted with the activities of “unholy alliances” to comment.