With CPM in deep water over SEZ,outsider hopes to drop anchor

For Somen Mitra,the battle for Diamond Harbour LS constituency is a battle for political survival....

For Somen Mitra,the battle for Diamond Harbour LS constituency is a battle for political survival. Once close to Indira and Rajiv Gandhi,the former president of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee left the party in July last year to float his own party,the Progressive Indira Congress. He has now joined hands with Mamata Banerjee and is contesting on a Trinamool Congress ticket.

It is Mitras first time in Diamond Harbour where he is pitted against sitting four-time MP Shamik Lahiri of the CPI(M). In a constituency where the defining theme as elsewhere in Bengal has become the tussle between farmland and industry,Lahiri had defeated Sougata Roy of the Trinamool Congress by a thumping margin of 130,000 votes in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.

This time,the challenge may be greater for him. Mitra may have left the Congress after differences with the leadership,but the fact that the party is a Trinamool ally and that workers still hold him in some regard gives him extra muscle. People know why I had to leave the party after serving it for so many years. I have made a new beginning. The only thing in my mind is to represent the people of Diamond Harbour, asserts Mitra. An able organiser,he has already convinced a section of Congress workers to campaign for him.

But his opponent is using the outsider card against Mitra. Lahiri says he is optimistic about winning the seat for the fifth consecutive time. Mitra is an outsider. No one knows him here in Diamond Harbour, says Lahiri. Locals say the sitting MP has been able to win back a section of party workers who left the CPI(M) during the last panchayat elections. So what if we had bad results in panchayat elections? People are coming back to us. But Trinamool is using violence and muscle power,which we have to combat, Lahiri adds.

The constituency incorporates both industrial zones like Falta SEZ and Budge Budge industrial belt as well as vast tracts of agricultural land. However,at the grassroots level,the farmland-for-industry issue still haunts the voters. Almost 35 per cent of the voters of the constituency are Muslims,who turned the tide against the Left in the last panchayat elections out of fear that their land might taken be over by the government. The Trinamool had made a clean sweep of the rural bodies. Falta,Budge Budge (I),Budge Budge (II),Diamond Harbour and Bishnupur (II) all of which were once considered Left bastions did a turnaround in the panchayat elections.

Since the 2004 LS elections a lot of things have happened. We are not fools. In 2004,we voted for the CPI(M). But in the panchayat elections,I did not even go to the polling booth. The CPI(M)is looking after common people any longer, says Md Ishaq,a resident of Falta.

The state government acquired land for Falta,but may people are yet to receive compensation. What the Left did in Nandigram is well-known. If they return,they will again try and take land, says Md Jalal,a resident of Amtala.

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Another major issue is the closed industries in this belt. So many industries here have been shut down for years and nobody has benefited from them. Birla Synthetics,Birla Gas and Carbide and three units of Birla jute have all been lying closed for years, says Robin Jana,a tea stall owner in Diamond Harbour,who was attached to one of the factories that closed eight years ago.

Diamond Harbour has been a red bastion. It is the CPI(M),which won the seat in 1977,1980,1984,1989,1991,1991,1996,1998,1999 and 2004. Now the party is banking on the clean image of Shamik Lahiri to draw in the votes in this electorate of about 13 lakh voters.