Barbs, Bullets In Bengal
By Raja Jaikrishan
15 May, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Democracy has got reduced to elections. Yesterday’s friends are today’s enemies and, possibly tomorrow’s adversaries. The battle for ballot in the ensuing municipal poll in Bengal is being fought with barbs and bullets.
The Congress and Trinamool Congress (TMC) combine humbled the CPM -Left Front in West Bengal in last year’s Lok Sabha Elections. Congress aspirants for the top job in Writer’s Building Pranab Mukherji and TMC chief Mamta Banerjee, both union cabinet ministers, are rivals in the state municipal polls.
Tempered by the Lok Sabha win Mamata Di showed restraint at Pranab Da’s remark that ‘the alliance was not in the interest of party’. To this Mamata Di reacted obliquely:’ Congress was responsible for dividing anti-left forces’.
The elections in West Bengal don’t remain limited to diatribes or broadsides between party leaders. The party workers, with and without the support of extremist fringes ,go for one another’s throats.
On Thursday,several were hurt in a factional fight of Congress workers in the presence of Pranab Da ahead of a party rally at Panihati, near Kolkata .Visibly annoyed PranabDa ordered the warring groups to leave the venue, Panihati Lok Sankskriti Bhavan. Unruly scenes were caused when one faction charged DCC president Debi Ghosal with spoiling an alliance with the Trinamool Congress in the district.
Four CPM supporters were shot dead by suspected Maoists. Posters near and their bodies, dumped on a state highway near Lalgarh, stated that the middle-aged supporters were police informers .The supporters had gone missing since last midnight.
Maoists have given a call in West Midnapore district tomorrow to protest against non-production of Soma before court even three days after her arrest.
Lalgarh and Jungle Mahal have become symbols of the adivasi resistance to the police-party(CPM) excesses. Treated as a law and order problem it can lead to a countrywide adivasi revolt, a potential civil war.
The scale of the CPM brand violence can be gauged from how the killers Benoy Konar, a party central committee member, and Manik Roy led the goons in Nandigram and Singur clashes. Manik Roy is at large not because of parole but because of impersonation. He got elected to the Lok Sabha by a record margin.
The duo and six others were convicted for Sai brothers’ murder in the early seventies. The killers are on parole since the CPM-led government assumed office after Emergency.
Benoy Konar led goons to attack the family residence of the Sais, prominent Congress supporters in Burdwan town in 1970.
They murdered the two Sai brothers,a private tutor and two domestic helps. The mother fainted witnessing the mayhem. Killers brought her back to senses and made to swallow cooked rice mixed with the blood of her sons. She lost her mental balance since.
The court sentenced life term for Benoy Konar, Khokan alias Nirupam Sen, Manik Roy (absconding), Amal Haldar and Bilo alias Paltoo Bandyopadhyay.
In 1977, the Left Front dominated by the CPM withdrew 33,000 criminal cases against its cadre. And in that big sweep the convicts of the Sai murder case were released on parole. The party managed to pilfer all the records of the case from the archives of the Calcutta High Court. When the Supreme Court asked for those there was not a shred of paper in the file.
