Maoist supporter projects separate identity

Assembly Elections 2011: Political cesspool has been created before polls

From one-roomed tenements, they have grown into two-storied buildings, new barracks have been built for the security-men, billets have come up behind concertina wires and sandbags and new weaponry has been added to their armouries so the police and the joint task force are well equipped to take on the Maoists.

The Maoist threat, once taken lightly, has transformed into a very different logistical challenge for the Left Front government whose presence here, save for that of the CPM, in the hinterland is patchy.

But deep in the contiguous forests that stretch beyond the borders of adjoining Jharkhand and in small villages like Lalgarh, Salboni, Nayagram, Gopiballabhpur, Belpahari and Kakrajhor — where the rebels, who are part of potent and lethal insurgency, lurk — a political cesspool has been created less than a month before the state’s “jangalmahal” goes to the polls on May 10.

On Thursday, in the shadow of the insurgency, a popular leader of the Maoist-backed People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA), Chhatradhar Mahato, collected his nomination papers, making it clear that the rebels were prepared to coalesce politically. Mahato has been in Midnapore jail since he was arrested in September 26, 2009.

Confirming Mahato’s decision to contest the election, PCPA leader’s lawyer Kaushik Sinha told Deccan Herald “he is firm on contesting because, for him, this would be fighting the unjust and repressive system by democratic means.”

But some in this sub-division dominated by indigenous peoples, or adivasis, see in Mahato’s decision a move that could only help the CPM, which is fighting with its back to the wall in the jangalmahal, to retain its pre-eminent political position.

The CPM had lost considerable political ground to the PCPA and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) after the Left Front government launched a coercive and brutal crackdown, sometimes with the help of party cadres, against the tribals and the Maoists following a series of daring attacks against the security forces by the insurgents in and around Lalgarh.

“Mahato’s decision to contest the polls will divide the anti-CPM votes and help its nominee Amar Basu defeat the incumbent MLA, Chunibala Hansda, of the Jharkhand Party,” said West Midnapore TMC general secretary Gourango Pradhan.

With four parties jostling for political space in Bengal’s jangalmahal area, there is clearly no room for error either for the CPM, which is desperate to make a comeback, or for the TMC which, for the past year or so, tried to make political capital by aligning itself with the PCPA in a bid to garner the crucial adivasi votes.

“It was a TMC plan to build its political machinery in the Maoist-dominated areas, especially because it was fully aware that its presence was weak. In elections in the past, the party could not even field agents in the polling booths,” senior Kolkata-based TMC leader disclosed, insisting that compared to the CPM, the TMC’s political machinery continues to remain week in the jangalmahal.

On its part, the PCPA, widely believed to be a front organisation for the Maoist guerrillas, found in its “relationship” with the TMC a means to legitimise and popularise its movement among the non-tribal Bengali voters of the region covering other districts like Birbhum, Purulia and Bankura.

“Mahato’s candidature must be read as a means to maintain a distinct political identity for the PCPA. It now appears that his decision has the support of the Maoists and, in Mahato’s projection as a PCPA nominee, the rebels seem to have made a move that is fraught with uncertainty, on the political as well as security fronts,” sources familiar with some Maoist leaders here said.

The wretched tribals, who have seen their hamlets burnt and searched by the security forces looking for Maoist sympathisers, are caught between the excesses of the police, which has been infiltrated by CPM cadres, and the rhetoric of the political parties, each of them promising them a “better future.”

At the haat (village market) in Belpahari, 40 km from here, on Wednesday, barely-clad bare-footed tribal women sat in the shade of saal trees selling urns of haandia, a brew made by fermenting rice. Emaciated men sold nuts and rotting fruits or vegetables.

“They are yet to come to our village, but they will soon,” said Rajamoni Tudu. The “they”, of course, are the Maoists who have dragged the region into ever more deadly conflict which, by most accounts here, neither the Left Front government, if it is returned to power, or the TMC, if it toppled the former, would be able to end very soon.