ASSEMBLY ELECTION

Rebel candidates jeopardise poll patterns

Official district unit leaderships of the Congress and the Trinamul Congress are on the same boat. They are facing a similar problem and that is the rebellion inside their organisations. The aggrieved rebels have gone so far that they dared to field independent candidates against the official candidates. At least Dinhata and Mekhliganj already witnessed it.

A resident of Dinhata, Dr Fazle Haque is a senior Congress leader. Once he was in the ministry led by the then chief minister Siddhartha Sankar Ray. In the 2006 Assembly election he won from neighbouring Sitai constituency as a Congress candidate. This time he expressed his eagerness to contest from Dinhata as the Sitai seat has been declared as a reserved one. The rebel camp in the Congress, the Youth Congress came out with a decision to support Mr Haque. A large section of Trinamul Congress supporters also expected to support him. Many supporters of the Greater Cooch Behar movement may also support him aiming defeat of the Left Front sponsored Forward Bloc candidate, Mr Udayan Guha.

But, Dinhata is the winning seat of the Trinamul Congress. They replaced the outgoing MLA Mr Ashok Mandal with its state unit general secretary Mr Mihir Goswami. Since then rebels became more active.  Later, the Dinhata seat was gifted to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) that is almost a non-entity here.

District Congress president Mr Shyamal Chaudhury said according to the PCC's instruction they would campaign in favour of the alliance supported candidate. If anyone comes up to campaign against the official candidate or tries to contest as independent candidate the matter will be conveyed to the PCC.

The Youth Congress leadership also made it known that they are not pleased with the official Congress candidates, Mr Jayanta Roy at Mekhliganj and Mr Keshab Roy at Sitai. It may affect the polling pattern of the Congress-Trinamul Congress alliance.

Mekhliganj is one of the two seats that the Congress got from the alliance. Here, a local Trinamul Congress leader, Mr Sunil Roy came up to contest and it is believed that a large section of the supporters of the Congress and the Trinamul Congress may support him, as he stood second in the previous election against the FB candidate. The local Congressmen are not happy with their official candidate, Mr Jayanta Roy. They wanted Mr Mrintunjay Singha Sarkar as the candidate and the district YC leadership also spoke in favour of him. Local Trinamul Congress activists wanted the seat for a Trinamul candidate but it was allotted to the Congress. Following the development they fielded Mr Sunil Roy. Here, the Left Front sponsored Forward Bloc candidate is the food and supply minister Mr Paresh Adhikary.

Perturbed with the situation, the district Trinamul Congress president Mr Rabindra Nath Ghosh said, the seat sharing was done by the state unit leaderships of the two parties. "We should abide by the instructions laid down by the state leadership. We must report all matters to them related with the situation that can disturb the unity of the alliance", he said.