Rahul Gandhi will lead anti-SIR stir in Bengal if EC repeats Bihar mistakes: Cong leader Prasenjit Bose

Kolkata: Congress leader Prasenjit Bose said that Rahul Gandhi will lead the anti-SIR stir in West Bengal ahead of next year's assembly polls if the Election Commission "repeats the mistakes it made in Bihar" while conducting the exercise.

Bose, an economist and social activist who recently joined the grand old party, said he expected a political realignment of opposition parties against the BJP if and when the special intensive revision of rolls happens in West Bengal, "presumably after the upcoming festive season".

"Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, is at the forefront of the anti-SIR movement in Bihar, and his exposes of the biased exercise have not only given significant political traction to the Congress but also granted impetus to the rank and file of the entire INDIA bloc," the 51-year-old party leader told PTI in an interview.

"Make no mistake, he will follow the same routine in West Bengal and states such as Assam, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where polls are due next year, if the EC fails to take lessons from its Bihar experience," Bose added.

The former Left leader said that although issues such as corruption under the TMC rule, atrocities against women and children, and persecution of Bengali-speaking migrants in BJP-ruled states would dominate the poll agenda in West Bengal, the SIR is likely to take centre stage once the process is initiated.

"Whether realignment of the political opposition in the wake of SIR would translate into the Congress joining hands with the TMC to counter the BJP would depend entirely on the ruling dispensation here. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek have maintained their 'Ekla chalo re' policy (of going alone) and you can't expect the Congress to extend a begging bowl for a seat-sharing arrangement," Bose said.

Bose, a prominent student leader at JNU and one of SFI's best-known strategists from the mid-1990s to early 2000s, joined the Congress in Kolkata on September 15 in the presence of Left-turned Congress leaders Syed Naseer Hussain and Kanhaiya Kumar.

He had resigned from the CPI(M) in 2012 over differences with the party over supporting Pranab Mukherjee's candidature as the President and was subsequently, expelled from the party.

Bose, however, maintained that the possibility of the EC taking a mellowed-down approach to the SIR exercise in the remaining states couldn't be discounted.

"One never knows, given the resistance the poll panel faced in Bihar and its experiences of the subsequent intervention of the Supreme Court over the controversial exercise, it might choose to take a mellowed-down approach in West Bengal," he said.

Bose laid equal stress on the prospective role of the TMC administration at the time of the exercise which, he said, could determine political equations in the state ahead of the polls.

"Given TMC's dubious track record in conducting free and fair polls in the state, its credibility runs in the negative territory. With the highly politicised nature of its administration, where state government officials function under the party's diktats, we have serious doubts about the fairness with which the BLOs, essentially Trinamool recruits, would conduct the SIR exercise," Bose alleged.

"While in Bihar, it was the marginalised segment -- women, Dalits, backward classes and Muslims -- whose names were unfairly deleted, in West Bengal, the TMC could try and delete names of supporters of opposition parties," he added.

Asserting that the Congress is fighting an "ideological battle with the Constitution as its centerpiece", Bose alleged, "The TMC has no such commitment." Asked why the INDIA bloc appears to be working better and in tandem with the existing 'Mahagathbandhan' in Bihar, while the Congress' attempts to stitch an alliance with the Left in West Bengal yielded very little electoral benefits in previous elections, Bose attributed the dismal performances of the two parties primarily to the absence of political programmes.

"It is my belief that people do not trust alliances that do not have concrete programmes. In Bihar, there's an issue against which the opposition parties are fighting. Based on that, there's now a wider political unity and an outline of a common programme. When this translates into a seat-sharing arrangement closer to the elections, it will have credibility in the eyes of the people. That never happened in West Bengal since the TMC came to power," he added.

To a question on how he perceives his future role in the Congress would be, Bose said he was open to the idea of contesting the assembly polls, circumstances permitting.

"I am prepared to serve the party in whichever capacity the leadership considers appropriate -- whether as a strategist, a field activist, or a blend of both. If circumstances demand that I contest an election, I am open to taking up that responsibility as well," he added.