It's Left again in school union polls

KOLKATA: Primary school teachers and employees all over the state stood by the Left Front in the elections to the Primary Education Council, giving a breather the Front was badly in need of after a series of reverses since the 2008 panchayat elections.
Left Front candidates won most of the teacher seats in south Bengal including East Midnapore, West Midnapore, North 24-Parganas, South 24-Parganas, Howrah and Nadia where the Left had faced a rout in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.The scene is similar in north Bengal, including Jalpaiguri.
The Front got a bonus in Malda and Murshidabad. Though the Congress-Trinamool alliance had a majority in the zilla parishads and panchayat samitis, it lost some seats to the Left Front during the voting process. Left Front candidates got some unexpected wins in Malda due to cross-voting on the Congress-Trinamool side.
Glitches in the opposition alliance went in favour of the Left in two Malda municipalities English Bazar and Old Malda. Of the 43 councillors, the Left Front has 20 while the Congress-Trinamool alliance has 23. However, two Congress councillors abstained from voting, bringing down the alliance tally to 21.
Despite the majority of the alliance by one, Left Front councillors namely Nihar Ghosh, Santosh Ghosh and Shyam Mandal got 24 votes each, four more than the Front strength. The alliance candidates, on the other hand, ended up with 17 votes.
The scene was similar in the Malda zilla parishad. Of the 34 members, Congress here has 19 while the Left has 15 members. However, the election results threw a surprise, with the alliance candidates getting 14 votes each while the LF candidates Golam Kibria Biswas, Ranjit Biswas and Hamidur Rahman got 18 votes each.
Apart from the numbers game, the results of the school council election though with a much smaller electorate, representing just a small slice of the society gave indications that teachers and employees at the lowest rung of the education system felt insecure with the rising wave of change and the continuous attack on them in the Maoist-dominated areas of Jangalmahal West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia.
Teachers in these areas voted in favour of the Front even in areas such as Jhargram in West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura. Front candidates all won all the teacher representatives in Nadia, as also all the three seats from councillors at the zilla parishad level. Trinamool Congress candidates, however, won three out of the four at the panchayat samity level, leaving one to the Congress.
Most significant is the Front's making an impressive breakthrough in the teacher constituency in East Midnapore, North 24-Parganas, Howrah and South 24-Parganas. CPM-supported candidates gained a majority in the teacher constituency in East Midnapore, while the Front bagged all the 15 seats in North 24 Parganas, 11 out of the 15 seats in Howrah, and won many seats in South 24-Parganas.