Stakes high for TMC, BJP in Dinhata bypoll

Dinhata: An electoral battle that played out in border seat Dinhata in 2006 is set for a replay on October 30 with Udayan Guha and Ashok Mandal as the major contestants in the assembly bypoll.
Mandal, the victor in 2006, was with Trinamool Congress then and Guha was a Forward Bloc candidate. A decade and a half later, the candidates remain the same though their party affiliations have changed.Mandal is the BJP nominee now and Guha the Trinamool candidate. Forward Bloc’s Abdur Rauf too is in the fray.
Guha, former Bloc leader Kamal Guha’s son, had missed the bus from this constituency in the Bengal assembly polls held earlier this year. He lost to BJP candidate Nisith Pramanik, a Union minister of state, by only 57 votes. Guha is desperate to upset the BJP applecart this time.
Guha has by his side 213 Trinamool MLAs sending out signals to the electorate that the bypoll result won’t bring about a change in the ruling dispensation. This was not the scene during polls in April when BJP had posed a serious challenge to Trinamool.
The Trinamool landslide win, however, sparked a reverse flow from BJP across the state and also in Cooch Behar. Cooch Behar BJP district secretary Sudeb Karmakar joined Trinamool ahead of the bypoll and so did BJP district coordinator Kalyan Sarkar. Even as BJP leaders refuse to acknowledge the party swap as a “loss”, its poll performance far below its 200-seat target had a demoralizing effect on party ranks.
A section of traders and businessmen in the district is scared of voting. They fear Guha’s defeat in the bypoll might invite Trinamool’s wrath that some of them allegedly faced after the assembly poll results.
Trinamool, on the other hand, has been consolidating its support base among women in this semi-urban constituency with the help of a social security scheme.
Yet, Trinamool leaders are keeping their fingers crossed. Internal feuds have prompted party seniors such as Firhad Hakim to hold meetings with the district Trinamool organizers. Two party activists were killed and five others injured in an intra-party clash at Gitaldaha in Dinhata on Shasthi.
Disturbing developments across the border at Rangpur’s Pirganj in Bangladesh are having an effect on refugees from Bangladesh who form a considerable chunk of Dinhata’s population. Ananta Ray, the self-declared king of the Koch-Rajbanshi population — whom Union home minister Amit Shah met in Assam ahead of assembly polls — is back in Cooch Behar.
BJP leaders have been cultivating the “maharaja” for long, hoping he can influence the majority Rajbanshis. Pramanik and MP Jayanta Roy are leading the BJP brigade from the front.
Trinamool, meanwhile, is silently trying to make inroads into the Rajbanshis and consolidate its base among the minority Muslims who constitute over 30% of the voters.
Dinhata residents fear trouble in this high-stakes battle. Trinamool wants Dinhata badly to make a breakthrough in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls while BJP can’t afford to lose Pramanik’s home turf. This might affect the polling percentage in this otherwise high-polling seat where voting had always been above 80%.