For Trinamool Congress, tough times in the ongoing Assembly polls are not just due to pressure from outside but also from within.
If allegations of corruption are making things difficult for the ruling party in Bengal, factional clashes have Mamata Banerjee’s organisational skills stretched to the seams. This is nowhere truer than in Birbhum.
The western district, where Trinamool made significant inroads since 2007, is now divided between two satraps, where both want a piece of the pie. While violent clashes are regular, the fight is over a bigger share of profit from granting contracts and sub-contracts for projects under different Panchayats. If on one side is Gadadhar Hajra, the sitting Trinamool MLA from Nanoor, the man matching blows is Kajal Sheikh, a local leader with a significantly large following.
However, Trinamool’s district president Anubrata Mondal is not willing to accept any factional clashes. He called Kajal “an opportunist and an anti-social, who wants power and money”.
“Kajal and his men have been using the party as a platform to make money since 2013. Kajal has most local anti-socials in his pocket and uses them to get his way,” Hajra said.
Unlike Mondal, he, however, admitted that clashes between his men and Kajal’s followers are common.
Kajal, who went ‘underground’ a few weeks before the polls, currently runs his operations over a phone, acknowledged his close aide Bappa.
He refused to arrange an interview with Kajal. The buzz is that Kajal has aligned with the CPM and is using the Trinamool party office at Papuri to help in the campaign for CPM candidate Shyamali Pradhan, against Hajra. Mondal said the party disavowed Kajal after getting to know of his betrayal.
He refused to talk about how Kajal’s office at Papuri was overrun by Hajra’s men on April 9.
“In our party no individual has any value other than our leader Mamata Banerjee. Only her presence and the party symbol matters. People like Kajal are of no consequence,” he said.
Ground reality, however, seemed different at places like Papuri, Bahiri, Basapara and Khuchutipara.
Locals accept Hajra’s organisational control but look up to Kajal as a messiah, who provides people with amenities where the ruling party has officially failed.
Before the 2011 Assembly polls, Mamata visited these troubled areas and assur
ed locals that all their problems will be solved. “Since then she has never been here.
Even Gadadhar did not visit most villages outside Nanoor. He might be the MLA but people think of Kajal as the real leader,” said Abu Taleb of Papuri, his words echoed by many others like Mantu Sheikh of Bahiri and Sheikh Rezaul from Basapara, who are both beneficiaries of Kajal’s largesse. Mantu lost both his hands and Rezaul lost an eye and a hand during an attack on their village by CPM cadre in 2008. “We can’t work in the fields anymore so Kajal got us jobs we can do. He even provides us with monthly allowance so we can run our families,” said Mantu. “People don’t want Gadadhar. People will vote for whoever they want. It’s true Kajal is not supporting Gadadhar but he’s also not supporting Pradhan,” said Taleb.