Aug. 9: Yesterday, it was Trinamul, today the Congress, Mamata will visit on Tuesday. Restive Mangalkot has turned a pilgrimage spot for Bengal’s political leaders.

Yesterday Mamata Banerjee announced that she would visit Mangalkot in two or three days to protest against the way police had baton- charged her supporters.

Today, the state Congress began lobbying Delhi to bring in either Bengal Congress president Pranab Mukherjee or any other AICC heavyweight to the area. Congress leaders visited Mangalkot today with police escort as Section 144 is in force there.

“I have already briefed Pranabda about today’s peaceful programme in Mangalkot and requested him to visit the area at his convenient time. We are also expecting senior AICC leaders to visit Mangalkot,” said state Congress working president Subrata Mukherjee.

The Congress delegation, led by Mukherjee and Congress MP Deepa Das Munshi. The team had 20 Congress leaders who went to Dhanyarukhi village, from where a team of Congress MLAs was chased out on July 15 by CPM activists.

Mangalkot, in Burdwan, became the centre of political attention after June 15, when a local CPM leader Falguni Mukherjee was killed by alleged Trinamul activists.

Unlike July 15, the villagers did not put up any resistance against the Congress team today.

A Left Front delegation, mostly comprising leaders of Burdwan district visited the area on July 24.

The political traffic to Mangalkot picked up from June 17, two days after Falguni Mukherjee’s murder.

Trinamul MP Sudip Bandopadhayay and party MLA Madan Mitra were the first to face the CPM activists’ fury when they tired to reach Mangalkot on June 17. They were stopped on the way.

On June 21, leader of the Opposition and Trinamul MLA Partha Chatterjee was surrounded by CPM activists for over six hours when he had tried to enter Mangalkot. He called up Pranab Mukherjee to complain about his “confinement” in the hands of CPM activists.

Nearly after a week, Nirupam Sen, the industries minister who is CPM MLA from Burdwan, attended a condolence meeting in Mangalkot to pay homage to Falguni Mukherjee.

Then on July 4, Subrata Mukherjee along with half a dozen state Congress leaders visited Mangalkot. After that came the visit of the nine Congress MLAs who were chased through slushy paddy fields.

Villagers have become “fed up” with visits of political leaders almost daily since June 15. “They (the leaders) come and go after making promises of hefty compensation. But they forget everything after reaching Calcutta,” said Sabita Ghosh of Dhanyarukhi village. “Are we animals in a zoo? Why are political leaders arriving here daily to see us?”

Equally fed up is Kartick Paul, 42, a share cropper of the same village.

“Whenever political leaders come here, policemen also accompany them. We also feel confident following assurances from leaders that police personnel would patrol the area. But they are nowhere to be seen afterwards,” he said.