Subrata Mukherjee

Tollygunge

If there was a prize for the candidate who was the most tensed on Wednesday, Arup Biswas might have won it easily. That he had won from the seat the last time and everyone was talking about the “winds of change” did little to settle his nerves.

“It is a very tough fight this time. After delimitation, the wards where I had got the maximum number of votes are no longer in the constituency,” said Arup, fiddling with his iPhone and Nokia 5250 in his Kudghat party office, his green kurta drenched in sweat.

He had arrived at the office at 6.30am and did not budge till 4.15pm, when he went out to cast his vote at a Rashbehari booth. Too tensed to have lunch, he drank countless cups of tea and smoked three packets of cigarettes. He also made several calls to area observers and the election commission office to complain of CPM men intimidating voters. His supporters distributed a handbook containing phone numbers of election officials and senior police officers.

Voting proceeded slowly in some booths of the constituency. At least three Trinamul poll camps in Dhalipara and Talbagan and two CPM ones in Shahidnagar were ransacked and police presence in the areas was increased. Five EVMs developed snags in the constituency.

“I stood in a queue for over 30 minutes at a booth in Talbagan in the morning but the line was hardly moving. I left in disgust but voted later in the afternoon,” said Tapan Dasgupta, an insurance agent.

Amit Mitra being blessed by his 96-year-old aunt before he left for his constituency

Around 3pm, Arup asked his men to visit each house in the constituency and find out if anybody had not voted till then. “Mamata Banerjee advised me to do this. I spoke to her twice and informed her how CPM goons are threatening voters,” said Arup.

Arup’s challenger Partha Pratim Biswas, in contrast, was relaxed the entire day and spent time watching television news in his Bikramgarh party office.

“I lost by a very small margin last time. This time, I have nothing to lose and I understand that I have an upper hand in this constituency. But I will accept whatever the people will decide,” he said, relaxing in a steel chair in a kurta and black trousers.

He cast his vote at 1.30pm at a booth opposite his house and enjoyed a lunch of rice and chicken curry with party colleagues in the afternoon.

Ballygunge, Kasba

Amit Mitra being blessed by his 96-year-old aunt before he left for his constituency

A sunny morning with a cool breeze was perfect for morning walkers on Ballygunge Circular Road for a brisk walk — and a quick vote.

Clad in sneakers and shorts, they found that most of their neighbours had had the same idea. “We’ve been waiting for 20 minutes,” said P. Gupta at the Institute of Jute Technology booth.

Police, too, said the highest turnout at these posh areas of Ballygunge was during the morning hours. “There was a queue in the morning, though it moved fast,” said sub-inspector Amit Roy at David Hare Training College.

At South Point High School, till the end of polling, a total of 1,425 of the 2,272 votes had been cast.

On Nasiruddin Road, near the Park Circus seven-point crossing, CPM candidate Fuad Halim stepped out of a booth at a school. “Polling has been largely peaceful,” he said. What does that augur for him? “It’s good for the democratic process,” said the doctor.

A little later, Trinamul heavyweight Subrata Mukherjee arrived in his Chevrolet Tavera, appearing miffed.

“I am surprised at the excesses of the Election Commission,” Mukherjee complained. “I was not allowed inside the Beniapukur Vidyapeath booth. The CRPF men pushed me. I will lodge a complaint with the Election Commission,” he thundered.

In Kasba’s Dolna School, where the youngest candidate in the fray, CPM’s Shatarup Ghosh, ambled in at 8.30am to cast his vote, there was no queue. He was out of the school in 10 minutes. “Voting was brisk,” Ghosh agreed.

In Topsia, on GJ Khan Road, the picture was different at 10am. In wards 66 and 67, people braved the mid-morning sun and came out to vote in large numbers. Trinamul candidate Javed Khan did the rounds in his Scorpio.

He went inside to check after receiving complaints of slow voting. There was nothing to the complaint, however, and he came out soon.

Behala East and West

The Trinamul candidate for Behala East, Sovan Chatterjee, attends to a presiding officer who was taken ill

Sovan Chatterjee, the Trinamul candidate in Behala East, cast his vote at Parnasree around 9.15am and rushed to a New Alipore booth where a presiding officer had fallen ill.

The mayor took Krishnendu Mondal to one of his party offices and arranged for a taxi in which the officer’s colleagues took him to a clinic.

The next stop for Chatterjee, who was on his Nokia Communicator almost throughout the day, was a booth near Siriti where the voting was allegedly slow.

“Sir era amader vote dite dichchhena (they are not allowing us to vote),” a Trinamul supporter said before Chatterjee stormed into the booth. He left only after the presiding officer assured him of a faster poll.

Chatterjee then criss-crossed the constituency, greeting every voter he came across, gorging on sweets offered by party colleagues and happily posing before cameras.

Chatterjee’s challenger, sitting MLA Kumkum Chakraborty, restricted herself to meeting fellow cadres at party offices. “There is no point in visiting booths. The polling is peaceful,” Chakraborty said in front of a CPM office in Barisha.

While she was talking, a man got off a rickshaw and said: “Didi tomakei vote-ta die elam. Tumi jitbe (I voted for you. You will win.)

In Behala West, the high turnout at almost all booths enthused rivals Partha Chatterjee (Trinamul) and Anupam Deb Sarkar (CPM), who were doing rounds of the constituency since early in the morning.

“I left my Naktala home at 6.30am and went to a Kali temple before heading for Behala. I know I will win,” said sitting MLA Chatterjee, in a blue kurta, white pyjama and sneakers.

Sarkar, a first-time candidate, was standing in a queue at a Thakurpukur school to cast his vote around 7.30am when Chatterjee reached there. The two shook hands; Chatterjee offered Sarkar tea but he refused.

The rivals bumped into each other at least six more times during the day.

Chatterjee left his constituency once in the afternoon to cast his vote in Naktala, along with wife Babli and daughter Sohini.

Khardah

The Trinamul candidate for Tollygunge, Arup Biswas, in his office

One economist started his constituency tour from an urban centre, while the other chose a rural pocket as the launch pad.

Finance minister Asim Dasgupta, the CPM candidate in Khardah, cast his vote in Salt Lake’s FD block around 8am and rushed to his party’s office at Rahara, which has served as his campaign headquarters in the run-up to the polls.

He hit the street at 9.20am, starting with Adarshanagar in the Khardah municipal area, shaking hands and exchanging an occasional namaskar with voters.

At Daspara, the former economics teacher even gave a lesson in mathematics to two Class III students he came across. “Teen theke teen baad dile koto hoy (How much is three minus three)?” he asked Suparna Das and Sarbani Bairagi. A pair of twins who will appear in Madhyamik next year offered Dasgupta some sweets, which he accepted as the girls were “not yet voters”.

The minister’s challenger, Amit Mitra of Trinamul, started his constituency tour from the Bilkanda II gram panchayat area. He had cast his vote in Tollygunge at 7am before leaving for Khardah, armed with the blessings his 96-year old aunt Latika Ghosh. Breakfast he had on the way, puri and sabzi prepared by sister Sumitra Mitra.

“I categorised the polling booths and chalked out plans accordingly,” said the economist. Clad in white dhoti and panjabi, Mitra visited 31 “most sensitive” booths from 8am to 11.30am. “The CPM had never allowed free poll in these areas,” Mitra alleged.

In all the booths — in Bilkandapur, Bondipur and Patulia — Mitra flashed his candidate’s identity card, talked to the presiding officers, voters and polling agents of his party. “Lore jaan (keep fighting),” he urged his volunteers. By 1.30pm, he had been to around 40 more.

Mitra made several calls to the district election observer, complaining against “the CPM’s musclemen, malfunctioning EVMs and booth jamming”. “I am extremely satisfied with the prompt action taken by the observer,” he said.

Both candidates were happy with the “huge turnout”.

Bidhannagar

Trinamul’s Smita Bakshi with her daughter after casting their vote at Jorasanko Thakurbari

Sujit Bose leaves his Sreebhumi home at 8.40am after worshipping Kali on his rooftop temple and almost walks into his rival Palash Das.

Das, a councillor of South Dum Dum Municipality where Bose is the vice-chairman, has come for a tour of his rival’s home turf with a startling allegation on his lips. “There was a kidnap attempt on my son on Sunday. Luckily, his art school teacher did not let him leave with a stranger,” he says.

The CPM candidate is the first to vote at neighbouring Patipukur Girls’ School and has already been out for more than an hour.

Bose meanwhile walks into Gandhi Seba Sangha Buniyadi Madhyamik Bidyalay and casts his vote. News has come in that booth jamming has started on Das’s turf. “If they have 50 boys in the queue, you put 100. Let the guards remove both groups. Janish na vote ki kore kortey hoy (Don’t you know how to conduct polls)?” he snaps over the phone.

In Salt Lake’s FD Block, home to Bose’s one-time mentor-turned-poll rival Subhas Chakraborty, voters are few around 2pm. The charismatic and controversial minister might have represented the area as long as he lived but now there is no buzz around his address.

At Mahisbathan, an added area of Salt Lake that was wrested by Trinamul in last year’s civic polls, the queue is long. There is just one EVM for 1,121 voters. “Had there been more than 1,200 voters, a second EVM would have been allotted. There’s little we can do,” says the presiding officer as voters complain of hours of wait.

A cloud looms, threatening to turn voters away and Das rushes in, with Ila Nandi, local leader and wife of ex-MP Amitava Nandi. He has more on his mind. “Trinamul is still campaigning door-to-door in Polenite (another added area next door). How is this possible?” he tells an election commission official over the phone. He hasn’t had time for lunch and still has the whole of Salt Lake to visit.

But his worries are nothing compared to that of FD Block homemaker Rita Mukherjee’s. “No cook, no maid. All have gone home to vote. I just can’t take it anymore.” Yet she has come to vote. “I may refuse to cook at home but this is my duty,” she smiles bravely in the face of domestic calamity.

Barasat

Chiranjeet

“Baba, o maarpit korbe na toh? (He won’t fight, will he, father?)” a little boy asked his father as Chiranjeet (Dipak) Chakrabarti was entering a polling booth at Badu, near Madhyamgram, on Wednesday.

Forced into a smile, the actor-turned-politician glanced at the boy before asking the person accompanying him: “Did you hear that? He is asking if I will start a fight.”

Chiranjeet the election candidate would like to think he has made some headway in Barasat over the past month, but his new identity is struggling to come out of the shadow of the robust reel-life hero of Tollywood potboilers like Pratik, Shatru, Lal Paan Bibi and Kulangar.

In booth after booth that the Trinamul candidate visited across his constituency from 8.50am till 5.10pm (with only a 75-minute lunch break), it was Chiranjeet the star that seemed to grab everyone’s attention.

“Emon sundar chehara, rodey rodey purey gelo (He is so handsome, but the sun has tanned him badly),” lamented a caring boudi at Barasat Parrycharan College.

“But he is much too tall for you,” her friend quipped, after which the duo had a good laugh.

Around 2pm, with the 60-year-old acting veteran and rookie politician looking tired and hungry, a group of women doing duty at a Trinamul camp in Nabapally pleaded with him to get off his air-conditioned Scorpio.

When he obliged them, the party workers forced him to have a paan that they got made for him on the spot.

Earlier in the day, at the Uttar Smriti FP School, Chiranjeet was loudly cheered as he drank straight from a daab (green coconut) after refusing to have the drink that had been served to him in a glass.

Chiranjeet’s pep talk to party workers also had the filmy touch to it. “Vote joto beshi hoy, sobuj toto beshi hobe (More the number of votes polled, more the number of green votes),” he was heard saying at Barasat Parrycharan College.

So was he worried that the adulation he had received everywhere in Barasat because of his film background might not translate into votes?

“I wouldn’t mind it if they vote for the film actor Chiranjeet. I am okay with anything as long as they give me the opportunity to work for them, which is what I am looking forward to,” the star of Bastir Meye Radha, in a pair of denims and striped shirt, told Metro.

Chiranjeet’s main rival is Sanjib Chattopadhaya of the Forward Bloc.

Jorasanko, Shyampukur, Chowringhee

Palash Das, the Left Front candidate for Bidhannagar, during polling

They may be rivals but Smita Bakshi, Janki Singh and Meena Devi Purohit, the three main contenders for the Jorasanko seat, proved on polling day that not every election need be about mudslinging and allegations of intimidation and attempted rigging.

“People in Jorasanko have always stepped out of their homes and voted in large numbers,” said Bakshi, the Trinamul candidate for the seat. “The Election Commission and the paramilitary forces are doing a good job,” she added.

Bakshi, CPM nominee Singh and BJP candidate Purohit had started their day early on V-Day, hitting the road by the time the first vote was cast at 7am.

The Jorasanko trio spent the rest of the day visiting booths, staying in touch with their polling agents and keeping track of the turnout.

Bakshi cast her vote at the Rabindra Bharati centre at 10.45am with husband Sanjay and daughter Snigdha by her side. Singh voted at the Maheswari Girls’ School centre near Ganesh Talkies at 9am.

At Shyampukur, Trinamul candidate Shashi Panja started her day around 6am with a moment’s silence and a bow in front of a photo of father-in-law Ajit Panja. “I will be trying to visit all the booths and lift the morale of our party workers,” she smiled. Panja skipped breakfast, making do with biscuits, chewing gum and a mango drink. She cast her vote at Keshav Academy around 1.45pm .

Jiban Kamal Saha of the CPM was spotted visiting party offices across the constituency to enquire about the turnout in each booth. He cast his vote at the Bagbazar Multipurpose Girls’ School centre.

Chowringhee was all about big numbers on a big day for the state, snaking queues forming in most booths soon after polling started.

Trinamul candidate Shikha Mitra toured her constituency along with two party workers. But opponent Bimal Singh, the CPM-backed RJD candidate, was nowhere to be seen. “I might not be facing stiff competition, but I am not complacent. I visited all booths to check if there was malpractice,” Mitra said after polling was over.

Dum Dum

Bratya Basu near a booth at Rabindranagar

One is a veteran actor-director-writer testing the waters in politics, the other is a veteran in politics lately accused of acting. Just as well that Dum Dum rivals Bratya Basu and Gautam Deb were a picture of opposites on election day.

Basu, the Trinamul Congress candidate, cast his vote within 10 minutes of the booth at the Kalindi Plot Owners’ Association Hall opening and immediately embarked on a whirlwind tour of his constituency.

Deb cast his vote in Hasnabad, the constituency he had previously represented, and drove back to Calcutta by around 9.30am. For the rest of the day, the CPM leader was ensconced in the Nagerbazar party office, ready with a quote or a sound bite for every newspaper and TV reporter who dropped by.

If Deb was laid-back, Basu looked charged up on his poll debut. “I would never wake up before 8.30am on any election day in all these years,” admitted Bratya, walking into his 23rd booth of the morning around 10.30am. “But I slept well last night. Ghoom disturb hotey parey baro tarikh-e (I may have disturbed sleep on May 12),” he said of verdict day-eve.

At Pramodnagar, one of Dum Dum’s interior colonies, a Trinamul worker recalled how the area used to be a Left Front stronghold. “But we captured it in the last civic polls,” he said.

A resident pleaded with Basu to help repair a temple in the locality, perhaps sure that he would be Dum Dum’s next MLA.

As he approached the polling station, a guard stopped the Trinamul candidate to check his identity card. Basu was impressed. “They are doing such a good job. One can easily stay home,” he said, asking his supporters to step back.

Deb had a different reason for staying put in a party office, if not home. “Why distract poll personnel or offend voters who don’t mean to vote for me?”

Gautam Deb at a CPM office in Nagerbazar

So isn’t he tracking how polling is going? Deb glanced at the TV screen before opening a Google map on an Apple iPad. “This is where I am,” he said, magnifying the screen and pointing to the map. “I can even track the movement of vehicles and OB vans (of TV channels),” he added.

Lest someone point out the irony of a Communist using one of capitalist America’s favourite tech tools, Deb said Karl Marx had advocated the use of technology to keep pace with the times.

Outside, the sun was blazing down. Leaning on grandson Sanat, 79-year-old Sudhir Basu walked into the St Mary’s Orphanage & Day School on Dum Dum Road to vote. “I had brain surgery last February but I still came. This election might be my last,” the retired bureaucrat said. His grandson, a first-time voter, said he had come for “the excitement of it all”.

As the day progressed, the Celsius dipped but tension between the rivals seemed to rise. Basu’s men at Bediapara had just sent word about “catching a woman in a red blouse” whispering “number 2” into every female voter’s ears. That is Deb’s serial number on the electronic voting machine.

Basu bristled. “This is why I am trying to cover every booth. I hear he (Deb) is saying that I will join his party once I lose,” he said, smirking.

The watch showed almost 5pm. Deb was still at the party office in Nagerbazar. “So they are saying they will win because they control both municipalities in Dum Dum? Let them get the Election Commission to stop polling and declare the results then,” he said. Sipping black tea and puffing away, he signed off with an offer: “If Mamata falls short of the majority by two seats, we will loan her two MLAs.”

Text: Sudeshna Banerjee, Sanjay Mandal, Anasuya Basu, Zeeshan Jawed, Tamaghna Banerjee and Rith Basu; pictures: Amit Datta, Sanat Kr. Sinha, Sayantan Ghosh, Pabitra Das, Rashbehari Das, Anindya Shankar Ray and Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya