ELECTION

CM, Mamata in Cooch Behar

COOCH BEHAR, March 23: State chief minister Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is coming to Cooch Behar district on 19 April to campaign in favour of the Left Front's Forward Bloc candidate, Mr Nripendra Nath Roy. District Forward Bloc secretary Mr Udayan Guha said the first meeting will be held at Tufanganj and the second at Dinhata.

District Trinamul Congress president Mr Rabi Ghosh said the proposed meeting of party supremo Miss Mamata Banerjee will be held at Dinhata on 29 March. She is coming to campaign in favour of Congress-Trinamul alliance candidate, Mr Arghya Roy Pradhan. As both the meetings will be crowd-puller ones the police are preparing tight-knit security plans. 

FB emphasis on anti-division of Bengal

COOCH BEHAR, March 23: The Forward Bloc has taken up separatism as the main target issue to campaign against. As the Greater Cooch Behar Democratic Party declared their intention to field Mr Bangshi Badan Barman as a candidate in the Cooch Behar Lok Sabha constituency the Forward Bloc is apprehending that they may grasp a large slice of the vote-cake. The GCDP's main agenda is formation of a separate state and the FB is trying to convince people against the danger of further division of Bengal.

After the district secretariat meeting of the Forward Bloc, the secretary Mr Udayan Guha said a deep-rooted conspiracy was there to divide Bengal once again. Among the political parties some are supporting the move openly and some are covertly. "During our electioneering we are explaining the people the danger of the secessionist forces active in this region", Mr Guha said. "Reviewing the polling we like to know how many people of this district support the separatists and the division of Bengal", he added. He however denied naming the political parties that are extending support to the separatists, because people know everything".

Explaining the campaign strategy the FB leader said they have taken up man-to-man contact plan because it is impossible to get in touch of all the voters through large meetings. No one of the 13,20,000 voters of Cooch Behar constituency will be left unattended. The meetings will be held on Assembly constituency-wise instead of holding any central rally.

The Forward Bloc is apparently confident about victory of its candidate. Ruling out the possibility of any danger coming out of the Congress-Trinamul alliance, Mr Guha, who is also a state FB secretariat member said, "In 2001 we fought against such alliance and in the last panchayat election too we had to fight against them. This time too we will unitedly fight them out."

The Left Front have attained unity down to the booth level and the booth level LF committees have been formed not for the Lok Sabha election only, these will be kept operational for future too, Mr Guha said. There was a longstanding demand to form such committees and at last that came up, he admitted.

To gear up the poll campaign in Cooch Behar a number of FB ministers and leaders are to appear. Mr Debabrata Biswas, Mr Rabindra Nath Ghosh (minister), Mr Barun Mukherjee (MP), Mr Naren De (minister), Mr Murtaja Hossain (minister), Mr Subrata Basu (MP), Mr Hafiz Alam Sairani and Mr Gobinda Roy are among them.