Bolpur has 30 per cent Muslim voters. At the grassroots level, comrades are finding it difficult to answer some tough questions being put to them.

“I have spoken to the Speaker even today over phone,” added Ghosh as he showed a letter he had received from Chatterjee’s office regarding setting up of a bank in Bahiri village near Bolpur. “He still finds time to address public grievances,” said Ghosh.

Sheikh Kamal, zonal committee member of Illambazar, a Muslim-dominated block under Bolpur, looked frustrated, sitting in the his office in Ghurisha where his party lost in the panchayat elections to Siddiqullah Choudhuri-led PDCI, a couple of months back. “Already, in the last panchayat elections, a section of the Muslims turned against us. Moreover, if we finally vote along with the BJP against the UPA, our reputation as an anti-communalism party will be under threat. It was very hard for us to build our secular image at the grassroots level and now we have to face the music from the villagers,” Kamal said.

From local farmers to intellectuals in Santiniketan, people voiced their anguish against the CPI(M) and for their Speaker MP. For octogenarian Bhobotosh Datta, who was Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s professor of Bengali at Presidency College in the 60s, it is Somnath and not the CPI(M) who matters.

“Everybody here wants Somnath to stay on as the Speaker and also as our MP. I would have never voted for the CPI(M) but for Somnath. He maintains a great degree of neutrality. I have seen him from close quarters. He looks after everybody, irrespective of political affiliations,” said Dutta.

... contd.