A bedside lamp glows inside the room. The air-conditioner hums softly. Cyclone Remal has whooshed past a day before. It’s ticking towards noon inside an apartment off Jessore Road in Dum Dum.
Trinamool MP and Dum Dum nominee, Saugata Roy hunches on the bed, pulls up a chair and settles for lunch — a plate of rice and fish.
His aides in Dum Dum say Dada will now have a nap. No visitors. No interviews.
Is the septuagenarian tired?
“I’m 77 and it has been quite sapping this time. This will be my last election,” Roy says.
Lunch over, Roy picks up a bunch of newspapers and heads for the bed.
The three-time MP from Dum Dum since 2009 can afford to rest in the afternoon. But across the seven Assembly segments of Dum Dum constituency, Trinamool workers can’t.
Roy’s winning margin has been on the slide. From over 1.5 lakhs in 2014, it narrowed down to just over 52,000 in 2019 when Roy won against the BJP's Samik Bhattacharya. Jyotipriya Mallik, Trinamool’s organisational head in North 24-Parganas, is in judicial custody. Madan Mitra, the go-to man from Kamarahati, is somewhat missing in action. There’s a resentment among smaller factions within the party about Roy’s candidature. Capping it all is the inevitable element of anti-incumbency.
Possibly, even Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee knows this. In six days, she held five meetings and road shows across Dum Dum constituency.
“Saugata da is very active. He is one of our MPs whom the BJP could never shout down in Parliament. And he never misses an invitation, be it a wedding or a pujo,” she says during one such campaign. The audience burst into peals of laughter. Roy smiles.
The retired professor of physics from Asutosh College is also touring his constituency, seeking votes for the last time.
“Since the last Lok Sabha elections, we have won all seven Assembly seats. The municipal boards are with us. I’ve never heard “go-back” slogans anywhere in the constituency during my campaign,” Roy had told The Telegraph during his lunch. “It should be easy this time. Trinamool Congress can’t lose the seat from here.”
The poll math may concur.
The last parliamentary polls saw nearly 16 per cent of the Left votes going to the BJP during the 2019 polls in this constituency spanning either side of Jessore Road and BT Road, north of Calcutta.
An erstwhile Left stronghold, the BJP’s vote percentage shot up from 22 per cent in 2014 to 38 per cent in 2019. Trinamool managed to hold on to its nearly 42 per cent vote share, the same as in 2014.
But elections aren’t just about poll math.
This time the BJP has decided to test its strength. The party replaced Bhattacharya with Shilbhadra Dutta, a two-time Trinamool MLA who switched over in 2020, as its candidate this time. BJP workers say many new voters moving into plush new apartments across new housing complexes hemming BT Road and parts of Rajarhat have emerged as their strength. Across the mandals, membership count has gone up. The upwardly mobile and fairly educated from pockets of Sodepur, Khardah, Rajarhat and North Dum Dum have silently pledged the BJP their support, workers say.
“Modiji’s promise is a game changer,” one of them said.
Sujan Chakrabarty, CPM’s central committee member and the candidate of the Left-Congress combine, is not ready to take the BJP into account.
“It’s a straight fight with Trinamool out here,” he says.
The first-floor room of the “Jyoti Basu Bhaban” party office in Kamarhati has streams of workers floating in and out. The candidate’s schedule is packed, they say.
After back-to-back road shows, Sujan has six meetings lined up across parts of Khardah, Panihati, Gopalpur and Araidah on a warm evening.
There are murmurs about why the CPM chose Dum Dum as the constituency for the former CPM MLA from Jadavpur.
Bhangar Assembly seat within Jadavpur Lok Sabha constituency may dash all hopes for the Left. Dum Dum, instead, offers more hope.
“I started my political career in 1978 from Ghughudanga in Dum Dum under the undivided 24 Parganas. I’m not an outsider here,” Sujan says.
Inside the war room of the party office off BT Road, senior party leaders such as Manas Mukherjee, who wrested the Kamarhati Assembly seat from Trinamool’s Madan Mitra in 2016, are poring over voter lists. Cups of red tea make endless rounds.
“Several industries including Jessop are lying shut (in the area). There are no jobs. Corruption (allegedly by Trinamool) in recruitment has shocked the middle class. There is widespread disenchantment about Trinamool and its style of functioning. The enthusiasm among the masses during my road shows speaks for itself,” Sujan says.
CPM workers say that they have long moved on from the setback in 1998 when the BJP’s Tapan Sikdar sprung a surprise win in Dum Dum, allegedly with the support of Subhas Chakrabarty of the CPM. Sikdar was the lone BJP representative among the 42 MPs that the state sent to the short-lived 12th Lok Sabha, opening the innings for the BJP in Bengal. Sikdar went on to win the elections a year later in 1999 and also became a minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee government.
Will a resurgent Left make it easier for Trinamool this time, The Telegraph asks Trinamool's Roy.
The veteran holds his stare for some time. His weather-beaten face is disgruntled.
“These are some of the smart English coinages you all have found. Like anti-incumbency. They mean nothing. For me it’s pro-incumbency and the winning margin,” the veteran politician says. “It should be easy this time. I repeat.”