Purbasthali: A BJP-run gram panchayat and a CPM-controlled rural body in East Burdwan have become symbols of a prestige fight for Trinamul at a time it has won over 64 per cent of the seats across the three panchayat tiers in the district uncontested.
Kalekhatla 1 and Kalekhatla 2, both in Kalna sub-division, have 35 seats between them. The CPM has been winning the 14-member Kalekhatla 1 panchayat since 1978 - the year the first panchayat election was held in Bengal after the Left came to power in 1977. In the 2013 rural polls, the CPM got absolute majority, defeating Trinamul.
The neighbouring Kalekhatla 2 panchayat has a more striking political history. The BJP has been dominated the 21-member rural body since 1993 when the saffron brigade had hardly any existence in the state. In the 2013 rural elections, the BJP had won 11 seats, the CPM six and Trinamul four in the gram panchayat.
"The tide will turn this time as we are confident of winning the two panchayats from the CPM and the BJP," Swapan Debnath, Trinamul party president in East Burdwan and minister in the Mamata Banerjee cabinet, told The Telegraph.
Sources in the party said Debnath and other senior leaders had pulled out all stops to ensure victory in the two panchayats in Kalna's Purbasthali block II.
Trinamul observer and minister Aroop Biswas on Friday held a rally in Purbasthali and urged people in Opposition-dominated areas to vote Trinamul for better development.
"People have been waiting here to defeat the CPM and the BJP this time. We will definitely win the panchayats. People will support us because of the development work of Mamata Banerjee," Biswas told reporters after the rally.
Several CPM and BJP leaders this correspondent spoke to said they were aware of the ruling party's "desperation" to bag the two panchayats.
Both parties alleged Trinamul intimidation of their candidates between April 2 and April 9, the initial window for nominations. "Like other parts of the state, the ruling party here tried to prevent our candidates from filing nominations but failed in the face of mass resistance," said Krishna Ghosh, the BJP chief of East Burdwan.
Both CPM and BJP candidates went to the SDO office to file nominations in large groups and said they retaliated whenever ruling party-backed goons tried to intimidate them. "We could put up candidates in all the 35 seats in the two panchayats," said Ghosh.
However, sources said the infighting within Trinamul and its factional feuds had made things easier for the Opposition parties. "We had lost the Purbasthali Assembly seat to the CPM in 2016 because of factional feuds and now the Opposition parties are trying to take advantage of the same in the rural polls," said a local Trinamul worker.
Both the CPM and the BJP have been highlighting in their campaigns the alleged corruption and infighting within the ruling party and the violence in the run-up to the panchayat polls. "If the ruling party is confident about development work, why are they intimidating us?" asked Pradip Saha, the CPM MLA from Purbasthali (North).
The BJP's focus in the campaign has been on fund flows from the Centre. "The people here were fed up with the CPM and chose us in 1993... We have been telling them that the Centre is providing funds for all rural development schemes but Mamata Banerjee is trying to hijack them and is giving different names like Kanyasree, Mission Nirmal Bangla and Banglar Awas Yojna in Bengal," said Ghosh, the East Burdwan BJP chief.
Amid the intense fight, the people are happy as the high-stakes political rivalry has led to development. "Most gravel roads in our village were converted to metalled ones. We also got street lights," said Bholanath Halder, a farmer at Burogacha in Kalekhatla 1.
