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| Mausam Noor in Harischandrapur on Sunday. (Surajit Roy) |
Islampur, April 3: The North Dinajpur Trinamul has invited the Congress’s Mausam Noor to campaign for its candidates in the district where another MP of the party has been accused of trying to queer the pitch of the alliance nominees.
The Trinamul Congress hopes that Mausam would be able to counter Raiganj MP Deepa Das Munshi, who has fielded dummy candidates in at least four constituencies. While both the MPs are from the Congress, Mausam is known to share a rapport with Trinamul chief Mamata Banerjee whose bete noire is Deepa.
The working president of the district Trinamul, Tilak Chowdhury, said it was no secret that Deepa was out to create a rift in the anti-Left alliance forged between his party and the Congress. “We have to counter it. We have communicated to our state leadership that we want Mausam Noor to campaign for our candidates in Itahar, Islampur, Chopra and Hemtabad,” he said, adding, that Mamata was likely to campaign in North Dinajpur on April 13.
District Congress president Mohit Sengupta said he was unaware of the invitation to Mausam, the Malda North MP.
“We will have Rahul Gandhi here in the middle of the month for a public meeting. The Trinamul allegations against our MP (Deepa) are baseless. We are strictly sticking to the alliance,” Sengupta, who has been fielded from Raiganj, claimed. Deepa and Sengupta have been accused of backing Chittaranjan Roy in Hemtabad where he has filed nominations as an Independent against Trinamul’s Sekhar Roy. Chittaranjan Roy, the sitting MLA from Raiganj, had been dropped by the Congress this time.
Javed Akhtar, the secretary of the Trinamul election committee here, said the formal invitation had been sent to Mausam yesterday. “We are hopeful Mausam will keep our request,” he said. The Malda MP does not seem to be unwilling, though she said she was yet to see the invitation. “If they invite me, I will definitely campaign for the alliance candidates,” Mausam told The Telegraph in Malda’s Harischandrapur where she was campaigning today for the Congress’s Mustak Alam.
The Trinamul’s Islampur candidate, Chowdhury Abdul Karim, said Deepa had been openly encouraging Independents. “She has fielded the chairperson of the Islampur municipality, Kanhaialal Agarwal, against me.”
In fact, this afternoon, over 100 Trinamul workers gheraoed Goalpokhar’s Congress candidate Ghulam Rabbani at Panjipara for an hour. The protesters demanded that Agarwal withdraw his nomination.
The Block Trinamul president of Goalpokhar, Farooq Alam, said Rabbani had been told about the deceit being played out by Deepa. “We have told the Congress candidate that if Deepa comes to campaign for him, she should also campaign for Karim. If she does not, then we will not allow her to enter Goalpokhar,” Alam said.
Rabbani, however, said he had not been “gheraoed”, but had been invited by the Trinamul Congress to their meeting at Panjipara. “But what they are demanding is not in my power to comply. I have said I will convey their views to the party leadership,” Rabbani said.
In Chopra, Deepa is known to be backing Hamidul Rahman against Trinamul’s Seikh Jalaluddin.
Trinamul has fielded Amal Acharya in Itahar but a dissident leader of the party, Rakbul Baksh, has filed his papers as an Independent from the same seat. Mamata’s party claimed that Deepa was backing the rebel.