By Tirthankar Mitra
KOLKATA: Considered to be a saffron stronghold in Bengal, the state BJP is not finding Madarihat Assembly segment part of Coochbehar Lok Sabha constituency to be a cakewalk in the November 13 by election. Rahul Lohar, the BJP nominee is faced with Gorkha dissent after Jitman Tamang, an Independent candidate has entered the fray. Madarihat is a sitting assembly constituency of the BJP and this is the only one out of the six assembly constituencies going to the by polls. The other five are with the Trinamool Congress.
Tamang having thrown his hat into the ring does not let the BJP feel certain about the votes of the Gorkha community which has a sizeable presence in the area. His presence threatens to divide the Gorkha votebank.
The Gorkhas have been committed BJP voters in the tea belt of north Bengal. The allegiance of this community has remained as a vote bank of the saffron camp nominees in north Bengal.
Tamang’s candidacy changes the pre poll scenario in Madarihat Assembly by poll. Moreover, differences have surfaced between West Bengal unit of BJP leadership and Alipurduar BJP MP Manoj Tigga who represented this constituency in the state Assembly.
Tigga has reportedly expressed his dissatisfaction over the choice of candidate in Madarihat which he vacated to contest the Lok Sabha elections. And there are others in Madarihat who share the MP’s disenchantment over the choice of candidate.
The choice of Rahul Lohar as the BJP nominee has given the TMC camp a big boost in this electoral race. It has reignited the memory of a 21 year old carnage in Dalgaon in which 19 persons had been charred to death.
In 2003 an irate mob had surrounded and set fire to the house of Tarkeshwar Lohar, a CITU leader known for his highhandedness. While the workers’ wing leader of CPI(M) Tarkeshwar escaped and was later apprehended but it marked the shrinking of influence of the CPI(M) in this tea belt.
The local people were irate at Lohar’s alleged plans to recruit outsiders for clerical posts instead of local youth. His earlier strongarm tactics had already built a powder keg and reports of the latest highhandedness whose fallout would be denial of jobs to local people, triggered the outburst.
Rahul Lohar, the BJP nominee is the son of Tarakeshwar Lohar, a fact which the TMC candidate Jay Prakash Toppo and his campaigners are never tired of pointing out. The 2003 Dalgaon killings is becoming a poll plank.
But the saffron camp is not taking it lying down. Robin Rai, one of the key aides of Tarakeshwar Lohar who was with him during the incident, is now in Trinamool Congress.
Rai is the general secretary of Trinamool Cha Bagan Sramik Union. Lohar had no connection with his father while Rai was associated with CITU leaders riding roughshod over tea garden workers’ aspirations. Yet the fact the remains despite Tippa winning twice from Madarihat, his lead from it reduced in the Lok Sabha elections. The saffron camp’s woes seem to mount.
Union home minister, Amit Shah who had dropped at Indo- Bangladesh border at Petrapol recently did not have a word on the coming by polls in which his party is the main contender. He called upon the people to unseat the TMC and bring in the BJP in 2026 Assembly elections, but was silent on by polls.
It seemed Shah, a star BJP campaigner did not have the 13 November bypolls in his scheme of things. The Union home minister did not meet the parents of the woman doctor of RG Kar Medical College who was raped and murdered despite the bereaved couple seeking a meeting with him..
Thereby Shah let go an opportunity to tap the sentiment which is not running in favour of the TMC dispensation over the death of the doctor. The feeling that the saffron top brass with a perspective of national politics could not care less about coming by-elections in West Bengal which could have been a stepping stone in making inroads into a state whose ruling party has been a stumbling block in the political advance of BJP in eastern India. (IPA Service)