In the heart of Bolpur town, in a narrow alley cramped with houses stands a three-storied beige-coloured building that is, or used to be, the nerve centre of the Trinamool Congress in Birbhum district. It now has a forlorn look, bereft of any buzz.

Three years earlier, this very building was the life of the party — teeming with party leaders, workers, political strategies being drawn up and executed.

The buzz of 2021 is not the only thing missing this election season. Also missing is the man who ran the show — Anubrata Mondal, the boss of Birbhum, has been lodged in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail since August 2022.

“Can your eyes believe what they are seeing at our party office just days before the polls?” asked the middle-aged Trinamool Congress worker as he switched on
the lights to the corridor on the first floor of the building The Telegraph visited on Wednesday.

The click of the lights being switched on is the only sound to break the stony silence that envelops the well-furnished, marbled space that was once the epicentre of power, political operations, and the warehouse of the ruling dispensation until Kesto (as Mondal is known as) was arrested by the CBI on August 11, 2022, on charges of his alleged involvement in a multi-crore cattle smuggling case. The Birbhum strongman and his daughter Sukanya are currently lodged in Tihar jail.

The district party office has been getting fewer footfalls since Mondal’s arrest, rued the party worker as the corridor lit up. Mondal’s only presence is a huge picture of him that has for company a similar-sized frame adorning a picture of Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee.

“Now, other senior leaders pay a visit only when the core committee (which was formed by Mamata Banerjee after Mondal’s arrest) meets. It is no longer vibrant like before. Two or three of us come to the office for a couple of hours,” he added.

“At least 300 people used to have lunch at that party office. Daily. Now the kitchen is closed,” said a Trinamool source.

The emptiness is in sharp contrast to the buzz that gripped the building a few days before the polling day of the 2021 Assembly elections when the TMC had won 10 out of 11 seats in the district. This is the first major election since 2011 when Birbhum will vote and Mondal is absent.

The Trinamool party office (beige outer wall) in Birbhum’s Bolpur. Picture by Amarnath Dutta

On that day in 2021, Mondal was busy holding meetings with his party colleagues and gathering intelligence inputs from local leaders about their preparation for the election. He was so busy that he could hardly spare five minutes for waiting reporters.

During Mondal’s time, the office resembled a royal court with hundreds of people taking turns to meet the TMC boss from early in the day to late in the night. Even an audience with Mondal came at the end of a round of questions by his security and party men where one had to reveal the identity and the reason for the visit before getting permission to appear before him. Even the “interrogation” process would not start without a prior appointment.

And one must remember that Mondal was not an MLA, a minister, or an MP. He was the president of one of the TMC’s 23 district units.

Even leaders of Opposition parties like the CPM or the Congress never denied that Mondal was the political ring-master of Birbhum, ensuring complete hegemony for Mamata Banerjee’s party.

In 2019, when the BJP unprecedentedly won 18 Lok Sabha seats, Mondal retained the two Birbhum seats with big margins. While Birbhum MP Satabdi Roy won by a margin of around 89,000 votes, Bolpur MP Asit Mal defeated the BJP by over 1 lakh votes.

Some political pundits had said that the uncontested victories in the rural polls of 2018 were responsible for the backlash in the Lok Sabha elections the following year when the BJP’s tally surged to 18. That argument didn’t hold for Birbhum, which, under the leadership of Mondal, stood first in the state by winning 80 per cent of the rural body seats uncontested.

The empty Bolpur building reflects the state of the ruling party in the crucial district. One rarely comes across Mondal’s picture on TMC’s poll banners and flexes but party workers still swear by his name.

“Anubrata Mondal is an emotion for party workers in Birbhum. Our chief minister Mamata Banerjee repeatedly spoke about his contribution and the conspiracy behind keeping him in jail. In his absence, we are shouldering his responsibilities in this crucial election,” said Bikash Roy Chowdhury, the convenor of the organisational core committee formed to take care of the party’s affairs under Mamata’s surveillance.

A TMC leader admitted that the void created by Mondal’s absence is difficult for anyone to fill. Searching for a leader to step into Mondal’s shoes, the TMC leadership picked Sheikh Kajal, a known rival of the arrested strongman. But the effort backfired as multiple senior leaders, mostly followers of Mondal, turned hostile.

Fearing a setback ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, Mamata assigned senior leaders to take care of one or two seats. While Kajal is handling the Nanoor Assembly segment, Assembly Deputy Speaker Asish Banerjee is nursing the Rampurhat and Hansan Assembly segments. But the jailed leader’s chair has been kept vacant by the party.

TMC workers are narrating the prison plight of their Kesto-da when they go on campaign.

“Known as a loose cannon for his off-the-cuff remarks, Mondal was popular in the party. Yes, he made sensational statements like asking party workers to hurl bombs at cops and ended up as an accused in the cattle smuggling case, but he also used to help thousands of poor people,” said a Trinamool leader.

However, a large section of voters do not agree with the Trinamool’s claim that they would get sympathy votes as Mondal is in jail. “Earlier we could not gather the courage to vote for other political parties except the TMC, fearing consequences. Now that he is in jail many voters would be able to cast votes of their choice this time,” said Ratan Biswas, a resident of Bolpur town and a tax consultant by profession.

But for Opposition parties, the Mondal spectre continues to haunt them. “Kesto is in jail, but his system is active. The police, goons, and a section of district officials are working hand-in-glove in the style of the atrocious leader. We are not sure whether Kesto’s absence will benefit us,” said BJP Birbhum president Dhruba Saha.

Birbhum and Bolpur vote on May 13