Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee (R) and State Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
Credit: PTI File Photos
Baharampur: “I grew up amongst you. How can I talk about politics here?” Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury says as he starts addressing the crowd that had waited for him patiently for more than two hours at Gorabazar Nimtala in Baharampur.
He pauses for a while to let the cheers subside and then points at a corner of the crossing and says: “We used to spend time at a tea stall there.” The audience bursts into laughter as the 68-year-old president of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee narrates how he and his friends used to take advantage of the naivety of the owner of a local eatery to have snacks in the evening without paying the bill in full.
Baharampur has both been 'janambhoomi' and 'karambhoomi' for Chowdhury, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from the constituency five times in a row since 1999. But he now faces tough challenges in his bid for a sixth term as a parliamentarian because West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, his bête noire in the state politics for years, has brought in cricket legend Yusuf Pathan from Gujarat to contest as her Trinamool Congress’s candidate against him.
This is the first time in the past 25 years that Chowdhury has a Muslim as his main rival in the elections. The Muslims account for over 50% of the electorate in the constituency and the TMC hopes that its candidate will take away a significant chunk of the vote bank that the “Robinhood of Baharampur” has been relying on.
Baharampur is not an exception to the story of the sagging fortune of the Congress in West Bengal. Chowdhury had won in 2019, but his vote share had dropped by over 5.07% to 45.47%, while his long-time lieutenant Apurba Sarkar a.k.a. David, who quit the Congress to join the TMC in 2018, had secured 39.26% votes, thus registering a 19.61% rise in the vote share of Mamata Banerjee’s party. The TMC also won six of the seven assembly segments of the parliamentary constituency in the state elections in 2021, while the BJP won one.
Chowdhury, himself, is unperturbed though, and remains confident of holding on to Baharampur. “I will quit politics and start selling nuts if I lose to Mamata Banerjee.”
“His party hardly has minimal presence in Baharampur, but Adhir Babu is a bigshot and commands respect from all. He has his own support base across the constituency,” says Shariful Islam, a grocer in Rejinagar, one of the assembly segments of the Lok Sabha constituency. “The women will not feel as safe as they feel now if Adhir Da loses and quits politics,” says Ananya Ghosh, who runs a small shop of cosmetic jewellery in Baharampur.
Chowdhury alleges that Banerjee is so desperate to beat him that they have asked the TMC workers in certain Hindu-majority areas of the constituency to campaign for the BJP candidate Nirmal Kumar Saha. “But I will still win,” he says emphatically, and adds: “It’s an easy task,”
Banerjee and her political heir apparent Abhishek Banerjee have been blaming Chowdhury for the failure of the negotiations between the TMC and the Congress for an electoral understanding and sharing of the Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. They also slam him for leading the Congress into an electoral understanding with the CPI(M).
Chowdhury, on the other hand, accuses Banerjee of quitting and sabotaging the I.N.D.I.A. at the behest of the BJP in order to save Abhishek, who also happens to be her nephew, from the probes by the central agencies into the allegations of corruption. That the BJP fielded “a weak candidate” against the TMC general secretary (Abhishek) in the Diamond Harbour constituency clearly shows that the two parties had a secret understanding, he adds.
“The understanding between the Congress and the CPI (M) is the need of the hour to save West Bengal from the TMC and the BJP,” he says, adding: “It will work.”
Chowdhury, who led the Congress in the 17th Lok Sabha, and the CPI (M) state secretary Mohammed Salim, who is contesting from the neighbouring Murshidabad Lok Sabha constituency, have campaigned for each other.
“This is my family. I don’t have to ask for votes from them,” he tells DH, as he concludes his speech, targeting both the BJP for its “divisive politics” and the TMC for its “misrule and rampant corruption in West Bengal”, but without appealing once to cast their votes for him.