Panskura seat and the 'mahajot'

BY DECIDING TO field its own nominee, Mr. Subhankar Sarkar, in the by-election for the Panskura Lok Sabha seat, the Congress(I) high command may have succeeded in registering its opposition to the ``mahajot'' idea mooted by influential sections in the party's West Bengal unit. But the reluctance shown by the enthusiasts of the grand-alliance-against-the-CPI(M) idea in the State unit of the party to take the contest in real earnest is something that the high command cannot gloss over. Apart from the fact of the Pradesh Congress(I) Committee president, Mr. A. B. A. Ghani Khan Choudhury's ``inability'' to show himself up with Mr. Sarkar when he went to file his nomination, the other important leader in the State unit, Mr. Somen Mitra, has declared that he will not be campaigning for the party nominee. Hence, Ms. Sonia Gandhi had to rely on the working president of the State unit, Mr. P. R. Das Munshi, to ensure that Mr. Sarkar filed his papers. There is no way that the Congress(I) high command can rest assured that the party ranks will be mobilised in strength for the campaign. All that the Congress(I) president could do is to avert a showdown with the recalcitrant sections in the State unit in the immediate context.

Indeed, the Congress(I) was hardly in a position to put up a serious fight in Panskura; apart from the fact that Geetha Mukherjee of the CPI had been winning the seat continuously from 1980, the Congress(I) has virtually been pushed out of the contest - like in several other West Bengal constituencies - ever since Ms. Mamata Banerjee teamed up with the BJP in 1998. It is Ms. Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and not the Congress(I) that has emerged as the rallying force against the Left parties. The birth of the Trinamool Congress just a few months before the 1998 general elections (by itself an expression of Ms. Banerjee's opposition to the Congress(I)'s support to the United Front at the Centre in which the Left parties played a major role) and the ease with which the fledgling outfit tied up with the BJP provided for the consolidation of an anti-Left platform in West Bengal. It is in this context that the Panskura by-election and the Congress(I)'s dilemma assume significance.

The Congress(I) high command may now have postponed a showdown with the influential sections in the State unit. And by doing so, Ms. Gandhi and her aides in New Delhi may have saved themselves and the party from the charge of teaming up with communal and sectarian forces. But the fact that the high command continues to remain a mute spectator when the leaders in one of its State units are showing no compunctions about advocating an alliance with the Trinamool Congress, an important constituent of the BJP- led coalition, is something that is too jarring to be ignored. Such moves that are innocent of ideology and displaying of crass opportunism led to the decimation of the Congress(I) in various other States - Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, for instance - in the past. And the high command now wants to wish away any confrontation with such leaders in West Bengal - whose only objective seems to be self-preservation - who are for a grand alliance with the Trinamool Congress, the BJP and any other platform opposed to the Left parties. Be that as it may, the Panskura by-election assumes significance in another context too. The CPI's nominee, Mr. Gurudas Dasgupta, after having established his worth as a member in the Rajya Sabha, has a tough battle ahead. The ill-feelings generated within the Left Front - when the CPI(M) refused to give Mr. Dasgupta another term in the Rajya Sabha - have added a new dimension to the by-election in that it remains to be seen whether the Left parties can manage complete unity of their ranks in Panskura.

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