For Mamata Banerjee to create a "Congress-mukt" Bengal, it is imperative she establishes her hegemony in Murshidabad, the land of the nawabs. And the 2021 Assembly polls provides her with that opportunity when 11 seats in the district votes on Thursday.
In 2011, the year of "poribartan", Murshidabad, with a 68 per cent Muslim population, sided mostly with the Congress. Mamata could win only one seat.
Mamata handed over the reins of Murshidabad district to her then trusted aide, Suvendu Adhikari, in 2015.
Dissension within the Khan Chowdhury family had made it easier for Mamata to make inroads in neighbouring Malda. Incidentally, the rise of the BJP in Malda also coincides with the weakening of the Congress and the CPM in the district.
Murshidabad, the capital of Bengal during the days of the nawab, is the district with the highest Muslim population in Bengal. It is the last bastion of the Congress. Murshidabad and neighbouring Malda is where the Congress has some presence even now in 2021, 44 years since it was ousted from the administration headquarters of Writers’ Buildings and 23 years since Mamata Banerjee left the party.
The Congress in Bengal has been bleeding since 1998, losing local satraps one after another to the Trinamul Congress. Yet the party remained alive, breathing. That oxygen support came from Murshidabad.
The threat to the last Congress citadel became imminent in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In the three years from 2016, when Congress had won 18 of the 22 Assembly seats in the district, the Suvendu effect had come into play. Trinamul wrested the Murshidabad and Jangipur Lok Sabha seats, and left the Congress trailing in 17 Assembly segments of the district.
Between 2016 and now, Murshidabad legislators Apurba Sarkar, Abu Taher Khan, Shaoni Singha Roy, Ashis Marjit, Akhruzzaman, Rabiul Alam Chowdhury were among the Congress winners who joined Trinamul.
Mohammad Sohrab, the former Congress legislature party leader, also joined Trinamul after losing the Assembly elections in 2016 from Jangipur. Needless to say, Congress lost the Jangipur Lok Sabha seat to the Trinamul as well, while Abu Taher Khan, who had come from the Congress, won the Murshidabad Lok Sabha seat.
Their departure, especially those from the Muslim community is significant, as the Muslims in the district were divided between the Congress and the Left partners, CPM and RSP, till 2016.
“That many of our MLAs who left were Muslims has given rise to a perception of an anti-Muslim bias within the Congress. It is also a fact that since Abdus Sattar and ABA Ghani Khan Chowdhury, we have not been able to project a single Muslim leader in state politics,” said a Congress leader from South Bengal.
In the predominantly Muslim district, the threat of the NRC-CAA has further consolidated voters on the basis of communities with Muslims looking at Mamata as the saviour, instead of the weakened Congress.
This time, Mamata herself camped in Murshidabad for three days ahead of the seventh phase of voting. Her presence was discomforting enough for state Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury to shoot of f complaints to the Election Commission.
For Murshidabad, Mamata had to step in as she owes the district’s turning the Trinamul way to Suvendu Adhikari, her bitter rival now in the BJP. Since his departure, she hadn’t had time to groom anyone else to take charge of the district.
In the Trinamul scheme of things, Mukul Roy, when he was Trinamul’s general secretary, had played a similar game of poaching. Politicians who joined Trinamul, like Saumitra Khan, left the party along with Roy. Since most of the current contenders on Trinamul tickets in Murshidabad were brought in to Trinamul by Adhikari junior, Mamata can never fully trust them.
Within the Congress-Left-Indian Secular Front alliance too there are signs of trouble as state Congress chief and Berhampore MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury refused to leave any seats for the ISF.
Voting will be held on Thursday in as many as 35 seats on Thursday, bringing the curtains down on the arduous eight-phase assembly elections in Bengal. Elections to 11 of the Assembly seats in Murshidabad district were held on April 26. The remaining 11 seats will go to polls on Thursday , along with parts of North Calcutta, Malda and Birbhum.