Mark of protest Graffiti on a wall in Murshidabad’s Sagardighi seeks votes for ‘district Congress-backed’ Independent candidate Aminul Islam, who has been pitted against Trinamul Congress’s Subrata Saha. Similar graffiti appeared in three other seats in the district. Congress MP Adhir Chowdhury has named Independent candidates against Trinamul nominees in the four Assembly seats. Picture by Kaushik Pramanik

Calcutta, March 22: Canning East may have sealed the electoral deal between the Congress and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress but the predominantly rural Assembly seat in South 24-Parganas seems to have few takers.

State Congress chief Manas Bhuniya was today virtually rebuffed when he requested the sitting party legislator from Garden Reach, Abdul Khalek Mollah, to contest from Canning East. Bhuniya was apparently unable to convince other senior party members to take on the state minister for land and land reforms, Abdul Rezzak Mollah. The CPM leader has been winning from the seat since 1977.

Khalek Mollah, who was denied the Metiabruz seat that has been carved out of his erstwhile Garden Reach constituency in the same district, not only turned down Bhuniya’s request but also asked the state Congress chief to contest from the seat instead.

“The Congress used me as a sacrificial goat to strike the alliance with Mamata. I got angry when Manas requested me to contest from Canning East which is a traditional CPM stronghold. I asked him why was he not shifting to Canning East from Sabang in West Midnapore from where he was elected in 2006,” Khalek Mollah told The Telegraph this afternoon.

He also revealed that some of his supporters had burnt an effigy of Bhuniya last evening at Burtala in Garden Reach to protest the leadership’s “abject surrender to Mamata”.

AICC sources said the leadership had to fall back on Khalek Mollah to take on the “formidable CPM minister” in Canning East, a day before finalising the names of party candidates for all 65 seats.

“We will have to finalise the list of candidates by tomorrow because the filing of nominations would begin on March 24. It’s true that veterans are not agreeing to contest from Canning East in the light of the party’s poor electoral prospects there,” admitted a senior AICC leader.

An AICC source said the names of two PCC functionaries — spokesperson Sukhendu Shekar Roy and secretary Khalid Ebadullah — were also being considered for the seat.

Although Bhuniya was not available for comment, Ebadullah, who is with the PCC chief in Delhi, confirmed that Khalek Mollah had refused to contest from Canning East “when Manasda requested him over the phone this afternoon”.

The Congress accepted Mamata’s offer of Canning East, though its demand for Calcutta Port and Metiabruz was turned down.

When Khalek Mollah was asked if he would contest as an Independent, he said he had been talking to party workers to come to a decision. “I may contest the Metiabruz seat as a People’s Democratic Conference of India (PDCI) candidate,” he said, citing a proposal from PDCI leader Siddiqullah Chowdhury.

However, Ram Pyare Ram, a six-time legislator from the old Kabitirtha constituency, today decided to stick to his guns. “I shall file my nomination against the Trinamul candidate for the Calcutta Port seat as an Independent,” he said.

He also attacked Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee for brokering the deal with Trinamul after having “sacrificed five sitting party legislators”.

“Pranabda has to be blamed for all the mess. Why was there a repeat of 2001 (when 14 Congress legislators were left out in order to stitch together an alliance with Mamata for the Assembly polls)?” he observed.

Trinamul leaders, however, did not attach much importance to some Congress legislators deciding to contest as Independents. “In Bengal, voters are polarised. They would either vote for the Left or the Congress and Trinamul. So, dissident Congress MLAs will have no chance if they contest as Independents against our nominees,” a Trinamul vice-president said.