Locals have begun to call it a 'second Kargil'. Keshpur - part of the Lok Sabha constituency of Panskura in West Bengal's Midnapore district - epitomizes the uncontrollable armed violence that marks Panskura's run up to the Lok Sabha byelections on June 5. The latest flare-up of violence in the region between supporters of the Trinamool Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has resulted in the brutal massacre of 11 supporters, with extensive arson and looting, leaving several hundreds injured and homeless. This happened on the day of the state government's imposition of section 144 on the constituency, instructed by the election commission, by which any person carrying arms will be immediately arrested. The coincidence proves the utter failure of the West Bengal government, and particularly of the police, to control this escalating tension in a constituency where the police has registered 642 licensed guns and suspect the owning of countless unlicensed ones. Over 60 Trinamool and CPI(M) activists have been killed in the last six months, and this severely underdeveloped region stands ravaged by arson and every other form of party-sponsored terrorism. Formerly a Left Front bastion with the late Gita Mukherjee winning the Panskura seat in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls, Keshpur has witnessed over the years a dramatic erosion of the Left Front's base with the emergence of the Trinamool Congress. The byelections have therefore become a prestige battle between the two parties, particularly with a view to next year's assembly elections. Tremendous energies have been channelled into the campaigning by both parties, embodied - most notoriously - by Ms Mamata Banerjee's recent speech to the Keshpur electorate, alleged by the Left Front to have instigated her supporters to armed violence. Whatever the allegations, both parties seem to have tapped into the most violently disruptive energies pent up in their regional electorate, unleashing a form of anarchy that takes up into itself every other social and economic conflict in the area. The armed 'fronts' of local people see themselves as participating militantly in the most basic 'struggle for existence'. The home (police) minister's scheme of bringing this situation under control by establishing satellite links between every district police station and the police headquarters in the Writers' Buildings seems characteristically quixotic. Electricity and telephone connections in most of Keshpur remain dysfunctional for days on end as a result of political sabotage or cable theft, unattended by the police. Mr Buddhadev Bhattachrya's frequent musings on the situation will probably have to reckon with something far more fundamental and frightening.