Haldia saving grace for Left Front

5 June 2012

biswabrata goswami
HALDIA, 5 JUNE: At a time when the CPI-M lost its grip on the power it had enjoyed for decades over the Durgapur Municipal Corporation, it has miraculously retained its dominance in the industrial town of Haldia.
The CPI-M has come to power again with a clear majority in the municipality ~ the state’s second-richest civic body after the Kolkata Municipal Corporation ~ today.  The contest had acquired the dimensions of a people’s appraisal of the performance of the Trinamul Congress on the one hand and of the immediate future of the CPI-M on the other.
The Trinamul Congress had hoped to win all the seats in Haldia municipality and had projected chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s development plans during the campaign .
The party's setback this year may be attributed to infighting involving party MP Subhendy Adhikari, and MLA Shiuli Saha. "We are not satisfied with the results of Haldia civic polls, though we have increased our seats from the previous election. However, we will carry out a thorough probe of the matter and will find out our loopholes,” said a senior Trinamul Congress leader. The victory, on the other hand, is all the more sweet for the Left Front as its Haldia strongman and former MP Lakshman Seth is now in jail in connection with the abduction-and-murder of seven Trinamul Congress workers during the Nandigram violence in 2007.
The industrial township of Haldia in West Bengal was recaptured by the Left Front, which had won 19 of the 26 seats when a high-voltage municipal election was held on 22 July 2007, in the shadow of the violent clashes in neighbouring Nandigram. This time, though, the party has become "weaker" and many of its leaders are absconding after being accused of being involved in the Nandigram violence.
“However, interestingly, local matters have been superseded by the tug of war at the state and national levels. The noise over the selection of candidates and extreme measures such as kidnapping of nominees, intimidation and the usual tactics of "area domination", had probably worried the residents who want peace. These residents may have turned off their support to the Trinamul," said a CPI-M party insider.
The CPI-M leaders, however, explained the victory as the peoples’ faith in the Left Front. "Haldia municipality had drawn many development projects for the sake of people in the past decades. But, the successes were dumped under the political movement triggered by the Trinamul Congress, based on a land acquisition notice for a proposed chemical hub at Nandigram. Later, the Left Front was wiped out in different polls and the Trinamul Congress started ruling the industrial hub. But, residents felt the heat of the poor ruling of the Trinamul Congress and decided to support us again,” said the party's former Haldia civic body chairperson, Mrs Tamalika Panda Seth.