Once a goonda, always a goonda.
That’s what Trinamool Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra said in reference to Union home minister Amit Shah addressing chief minister Mamata Banerjee with “Ei Didi”.
Shah, who has been stationed and campaigning vigorously in Bengal, has in turn warned that Trinamool goondas will be hunted after the results are announced on May 4 .
With the physical and political temperature both heating up in Bengal, goondas have returned to the spotlight. Not that they were ever away. Their “necessity” is never felt more than during elections in Bengal.
On the night of April 19, two days after income tax officials raided the homes of Trinamool’s Rashbihari nominee Debashish Kumar and his close aide Kumar Saha, posters of BJP candidate Swapan Dasgupta in the same constituency were torn down in the area around Ballygunge Terrace, Keyatala and Hindustan Park in south Calcutta.
“Who else,” asked an aide of the BJP nominee when asked whether the party suspected the hand of Kumar Saha. “This happened right after the crackdown. Our workers are being threatened daily. Everything is happening at a micro level. Nothing severe that can make some noise.”
Saha’s name features among more than 10 “troublemakers” identified by the Election Commission in Mamata Banerjee’s Bhabanipur constituency in Calcutta.
When elections involve as high stakes as the ongoing one in Bengal, the “goondas” emerge out of the shadows. They are needed to intimidate workers of the rival political party, voters – irrespective of whether they live in apartments or slums.
It is a complex mix of political power, grassroots level networking and the presence of individuals with a controversial past.
When Kumar Saha joined the Trinamool in September 2014 holding the hands of the late Mukul Roy, the party’s all-powerful south Calcutta lobby had frowned. Having proved his utility in subsequent elections, Saha rose to prominence in the local Trinamool unit and calls himself a political figure these days.
As does Biswajit Poddar alias Sona Pappu, the absconding south Calcutta businessman and “Trinamool leader” with a number of charges pending against him.
Poddar appeared in a social media “live” video on April 7, cheering loudly for Mamata and Abhishek Banerjee while the city police and the Enforcement Directorate are still looking for him.
Poddar’s area of operation stretches from across the Gariahat crossing more to the east in Kasba in Calcutta.
Ahead of the Assembly election the central poll panel, accused of being hyperactive by the ruling Trinamool, has instructed the city police to round up potential “troublemakers” among the criminals active in different localities in the south, central and northern parts of Bengal’s capital.
Kartick Sonkar, whose network runs from Jorabagan to Burrabazar, Istique Ahmed from Jorasanko, Sheikh Manowar from Tiljala, Joydeb Malakar from Tollygunge and Uttam Shaw from Kasba were among the city police have picked up ahead of the election in the city.
“A list was prepared,” said a senior officer at Lalbazar, the Calcutta police headquarters. “Accordingly the anti-rowdy section of the detective department carried out the arrests. More action will follow in the coming days as the poll date for the city approaches.”
It is an open secret that these local strongmen are engaged by political parties – specially the ruling one, whichever that may be – over decades for what is colloquially known in Bengal as “vote korano” [getting the vote out].
They are provided access to the voters’ list by the political party, which has insider information on who have moved out of the locality or have died. It took the commission several years to delete 24,16,852 dead voters from the electoral rolls of Bengal.
“With most of the dead voters gone, the musclemen of the political parties will have to depend on intimidation to ensure the genuine voters do not reach the polling booth,” said a city-based political analyst.
These musclemen are also put in charge of preventing from voting known voters who oppose the ruling party; such examples are not rare even in and around Calcutta for decades now.
“The EC has promised fair polls like it does before every election. Only when polling actually happens will we get to know how effective their measures were,” the analyst said.
On occasions, the musclemen have proved smarter than high-ranking officials.
In the 2016 Bengal Assembly election, Anwar Khan, a Trinamool leader from Cossipore in north Calcutta with alleged criminal antecedents, under watch at his residence, gave the slip to the police.
He was finally apprehended four hours later from Dum Dum Seven Tanks on the day of polling.
The Election Commission had ordered Khan be kept under round the clock watch, apprehending that he might stoke violence and intimidate voters.
In the absence of Sonkar, Ahmed, Manowar, Malakar and Shaw there are many more waiting to fill the gap. Whether the poll panel, the central forces and the cops can stop them will be clear when Calcutta goes to vote on April 29.