Asansol shows signs of lotus blooming

ASANSOL: Silence descends on Shyamla village, 79km from Asansol town, sometime after Babul Supriyo's campaign rally passes the hutments in Pandaveswar assembly segment, which the Left Front had managed to retain even amid the 2011 poribartan storm. "Chup-chap phooley chhap (quietly press the 'flower' button)," whispers daily wager Rash Baidya Kar after a while. Don't be mistaken.The 'phool' he means is the lotus and not the kind associated with the Trinamool Congress.
Kar has borrowed one of Mamata Banerjee's signature chants ahead of the 2001 assembly polls when she had dared Bengal to topple the Left. The results first showed in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, as a prelude to Trinamool's landslide 2011 assembly win.
A trip down the bumpy roads in the eastern tip gives one a hint of the popular forecast: CPM keeping this Lok Sabha seat, piggy-riding on the BJP wave. Random surveys in the CPM stronghold, however, reveal that "neutralized" Left voters are increasingly migrating towards the BJP. By the time the battle for ballots is fought on May 7, the CPM could regain some of the political space, only to make way for the BJP.
A BDO staffer at Salanpur recounts an old woman at Dendua wanting to know the lotus's position in the EVM during a recent NOTA awareness camp. The village had voted overwhelmingly for Trinamool in the 2011 assembly polls.
"We had voted for CPM earlier. Now we'll back Trinamool. But BJP will get 50% votes. Babul is a heavyweight candidate," believes Samiran Ghosh of Siddhipur Bagdia village near Raniganj.
The 43-year-old Babul Supriyo aka Supriyo Boral, who has never dabbled in politics before, is moved by his newfound star status, gifted to him on a platter by the Trinamool. Asansol is the only constituency where Mamata has held three meetings in 24 hours. If Babul was initially dismissed as yet another celeb-candidate, the Trinamool's angst is more than palpable now with Didi's trusted lieutenant and INTTUC president Dola Sen flooding the state chief electoral office with complaints, varying from Babul's alleged drunken campaigning to possessing illegal arms. The recent two-hour police grilling hasn't gone down well with the voters either.
"The silver lining is that people understand the dirty politics. I won't let them down," says Babul.
Sen, on the other hand, is bogged down by faction feud. Mamata ignored the aspirations of economics professor Surhid Basu Mallick and Asansol mayor Tapas Banerjee. The INTTUC has replaced the Citu in the 150-odd industrial units, but many of the workers owe allegiance to veteran leader Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay with whom Sen has testy ties. There's another faction, belonging to minister Malay Ghatak, that's wary of someone "with direct access to CM controlling the constituency".
Sen also finds it difficult to keep pace with Babul's rigorous campaigning. Invoking bijli-sadak-pani, he's asking for development votes like the Trinamool did in 2009 and 2011. To poor village girls, he says: "Do you have water to shampoo your hair?" To the educated, he asks why the Andal airport is a non-starter because of Trinamool's land policy. He refers to the Rs 131-crore drinking water project under JNNURM that hasn't taken off in Kulti.
Sen tom-toms: "ECL has seen profit this year because of us. We have stalled illegal mining that thrived under the Left, with the formation of the police commissionerate."
But people like Amrit Pal of Furfura village are not convinced. "There's no alternative source of income. The 100 days' work has not reached us."
The disenchantment should translate into Left votes. But will it? "It's the Lok Sabha and people will vote differently," agree IISCO employees Rishi Kumar Shaw and Jitender Kumar. Asansol represents a mini-India with people migrating from Jharkhand and Bihar, the Hindi heartland and BJP's karmabhoomi UP and even the faraway Rajasthan (the 40,000-odd Marwaris are with Modi). "When India says Abki Bar Modi Sarkar, how can we speak otherwise?" says Sheetal Jain, a Burnpur housewife. Mamata's reference to the Hindi-speaking population as "mehman" has only strengthened the BJP's prospects.
If Babul is chiseling away Didi's votebank, the 28% Muslims are expected to vote decisively against Modi. But the calculations can go awry with a vote-bank split between Trinamool, CPM and the Congress, much as Partha Mukherjee, Asansol zonal committee secretary and CPM candidate Bansa Gopal Choudhury's agent, hopes: "We had got 22% of the votes in 2011. But this time, most Muslims will vote for us."
Choudhury, the sitting MP who polled 48.69% votes in 2009, acknowledges the erosion of Left share from 41% in 2011 to 38% in the 2013 panchayat polls, but shrugs off the BJP X-factor. "I don't wish to go into poll arithmetic. All I know is that I'll win."
But that's also the line of the Congress. Indrani Mishra, a Rahul Gandhi favourite, isn't bothered with the flight of local Congress leaders to Trinamool or the sudden Modi surge in Asansol: "The biggest surprise will be my victory," she says.
The air is several times more charged than in 1991, says veteran BJP leader S N Lamba: "People are unhappy with Mamata's Muslim appeasement tactics." Clearly, Modi has ignited the anti-Trinamool fire in Asansol. So much so that the CPM doesn't feel like galvanizing its cadres, as a visit to the deserted CPM office Harekrishna-Bijoy Bhavan, proved.
Will this not-so-prepared CPM upstage the BJP or take some sheen off Mamata's claim to power? Pollsters, who had earlier predicted a 2011 sequel and later changed it in favour of the CPM (as a result of BJP eating into Trinamool's vote share), aren't sure. If the BJP manages to notch up over 30% votes, the game could well be theirs.