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Regular-article-logo Tuesday, 22 July 2025

Mukul keeps off 'peaceful' elections

Leader cooped up 40km away

Our Bureau Published 14.02.15, 12:00 AM
Mukul Roy outside the Madhyamgram party office on Friday. Picture by Sanjib Chaki

Calcutta, Feb. 13: Mukul Roy stayed away from Bongaon during today's bypoll as Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee kept tabs on electioneering from Trinamul Bhavan.

Trinamul sources said Roy, the all-India general secretary, was holed up in a party office in Madhyamgram, 40km from Bongaon, till 5pm. They said he met some party workers and never for once left the office.

Roy's location assumes significance against the backdrop of murmurs in the Trinamul camp that the leader has been maintaining a distance from the party. The speculation became more intense after he was questioned by the CBI in the Saradha scam.

The fact that Roy did not steer the campaign for the bypolls in the Bongaon Lok Sabha seat and the Krishnaganj Assembly constituency is an open secret in Trinamul. So the party rank was keenly watching Roy's role today.

"During earlier elections, Mukulda used to spend the day at Trinamul Bhavan, monitoring everything. In case of important bypolls, he used to be at a location close to where the election was taking place," a Trinamul source said. "But today, he was around 40km from the epicentre of the action in Bongaon," he added.

Sources said besides Roy's no-show, another "surprise" was that none of the Opposition parties demanded repolling in any of the 2,100-odd booths.

"This has been one of the most peaceful polls in recent times," an Election Commission official said.

While EC officials heaved a sigh of relief, the Trinamul camp was trying to assess the reasons behind the peaceful elections. One reason, they said, was the heavy deployment of central forces. Ninety companies of central forces were deployed in the two seats, the heaviest ever for an Assembly seat and a Lok Sabha constituency.

"There must have been some other reasons," said a Trinamul veteran who did not hide his worries.

Most Trinamul MLAs close to Roy were not seen playing an "active" role either before or on polling day.

Silabhadra Dutta, the Barrackpore MLA, was with Roy through the day at Madhyamgram. Nirmal Ghosh, the Panihati MLA and North 24-Parganas Trinamul observer, was with Roy till 3.30pm, after which he left for Bongaon. Roy's son and Bijpur MLA Subhrangshu stayed indoors at Kanchrapara though he is the face of the organisation in Kalyani, which comes under the Bongaon constituency.

Later in the day, there were reports of minor disturbances in parts of Nadia that are part of the Bongaon seat. Trinamul was accused of rigging. But the Trinamul camp was not sure who orchestrated the disturbances and who benefited.

"We don't know what the people close to Mukulda are doing," said a senior Trinamul leader.

The unease in the Trinamul camp got reflected at a government programme this afternoon, where Mamata Banerjee was the main speaker. A long conversation between Mamata and Trinamul state president Subrata Bakshi fuelled conjecture on whether they were upset with some of the day's developments.

Bakshi was seen receiving a call and handing over the phone to the chief minister. She spoke for some time and then left hurriedly, saying "shame, shame".

Bakshi claimed that a party worker had called him up to complain that he was not allowed to enter a booth because he was not carrying his voter card.

"It is very unlikely that an ordinary worker will call up Bakshida and then Didi will also speak to him," a Trinamul source said.

The party sources said that in some parts of Bongaon, Trinamul activists worked at cross-purposes.

"A section of leaders and workers went around yesterday and asked voters to come early to the booths. In the morning, another group tried to stop voters," a source said.

The first-time Trinamul nominee from Bongaon, Mamatabala Thakur, found it difficult to "assess" what was happening on the ground.

" Thik ki hochchhe bujhte parchhi na (I cannot understand what exactly is going on)," she said when The Telegraph asked her whether she was satisfied with the polling process.

Till 7pm, the polling percentage was 79 per cent in Bongaon and 82 per cent in Krishnaganj. The turnout at Bongaon was 83.32 per cent in 2014 while that in Krishnaganj was 87.99 per cent in 2011.

Although there were no major complaints of malpractice or violence and none of the Opposition parties demanded repolling, Trinamul was accused of taking recourse to booth-capturing in the interiors of Gayeshpur and Kalyani in Nadia, where the CPM still has a presence. Most of the polling-related complaints, lodged by the CPM and the BJP, came from these two areas.

Sources in the CPM said the Nadia district committee report indicated "large-scale rigging" in the last hour of polling, upsetting equations.

"The report we have received from the district unit states that the polling per cent in some villages ended at 70-plus, though before the final leg it was between 50 and 54," a CPM leader said.

CPM state secretariat member Rabin Deb said in eight booths in Kalyani, the CPM's polling agents were thrown out, while in another 15-20 booths, voters were threatened.

Bengal BJP president Rahul Sinha alleged that similar tactics were employed against his party workers in around 55 booths.

"We don't want a repoll as Trinamul will use a similar strategy," Sinha said.

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