Biswas: Hopeful

Balurghat/ Calcutta, June 15: “Concerned” about the plummeting relations between the CPM and RSP, Left Front chairman Biman Bose today said he has sent a CPM minister to South Dinajpur to sort things out between the allies engaged in a bitter tussle to control the Balurghat municipality.

But in the South Dinajpur district headquarters, the allies remain at each other’s throats, with the RSP and CPM calling each other names.

Worse, housing minister Goutam Deb, sent by Bose to end the internecine fight, today blamed the RSP for the crack in the Left Front. Addressing a CPM rally, he said the alliance could not take place for the municipal poll because of the RSP’s intransigence over seats.

Acknowledging that the allies were fighting each other for control of the civic body, Bose said Deb would hold talks with leaders from both parties to make sure the situation did not go out of the Front’s hand.

He said he wanted to end the bitterness between the constituents of the Left Front government.

Describing Balurghat as an exception, Bose, a CPM politburo member, said the Front partners were fighting next Sunday’s municipal poll jointly everywhere else.

Biswanath Chowdhury, a senior RSP leader leading his party’s municipal campaign to retain the Balurghat municipality, said Deb called him on his cell phone on his arrival yesterday. “We talked for a few minutes, but there was nothing worth telling you.”

CPM state secretary Anil Biswas, barnstorming at Dalkhola in North Dinajpur, played down the bitter wrangling between the allies. “Such things happen during election campaigns. But the allies should keep in mind that they all belong to the Left Front.”

The CPM and RSP have pitted candidates against each other in all 23 municipal wards. So intense is the fight that none is willing to give the other an inch. Hardly had a RSP rally ended at Balurghat’s State Bank More than the CPM held a rally at the same spot today, using the same loudspeakers.

Each side blamed the other for not doing enough for local residents.

RSP leader Bimal Sarkar, a member of the party’s state committee, dared Amit Sarkar, a district CPM leader, to strip Chowdhury of his portfolio.

“If Biswanath Chowdhury loses his departments (jail and social welfare), it will be end of the Left Front government,” he thundered at the rally.

The relations between the allies have been strained since the panchayat election, where they fought each other in South Dinajpur district.

Hours later, Deb told a CPM rally that the RSP had refused to accept the Left Front’s suggestion that both parties be given the seats they won in the last municipal poll.

“The CPM had turned down the same suggestion made by the Left Front in the panchayat poll. How can they expect us to accept it now,” Chowdhury said.

While the CPM targets Chowdhury and threatened to “demote” him to excise minister, the RSP has trained its gun on Narayan Biswas, the smallscale industries minister and a senior CPM leader from Gangarampur.

“Narayan Biswas has not done anything for South Dinjapur. If anything, he is an obstacle to the district’s development,” Sarkar said, to the applause of his party supporters.

The RSP leader said Biswas, former minister of state for transport, had promised a bus stand a decade ago. “But people are still waiting for that bus stand to come up.”

Sunil Sengupta, a RSP central committee member, accused the CPI of “ganging up” with the CPM to defeat his party.