Somnath Sow, CPM’s candidate from ward 2 of Bolpur municipality, has sent an email to Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, urging him to come and vote on February 27.
Sen’s ancestral home in Santiniketan, Pratichi, is part of Santiniketan’s Sripally area that was recently incorporated in ward 2 of the municipality. Sen’s name is on the electoral roll of the Bolpur Assembly segment in the NRI category. Sen is not in India at the moment.
“It is our great fortune that a person like Amartya Sen is a voter in the area from where I am contesting. I have sent him an email in my capacity as candidate and have requested him to cast his vote if the timings are suitable for him. I also sought his suggestions for the future of our municipality,” said Sow, who is a student of Economics in Visva-Bharati.
“I did not ask that he vote for me, as he is above such appeals. I just requested him to come to cast his vote if he is able,” he added.
Sow, an SFI leader, is yet to get a reply to his email.
Chandan Mondal, Trinamul’s nominee in the same ward, has also reportedly paid a visit to Sen’s home with an appeal for his vote.
“He is a Nobel laureate who is one of our voters. I don’t know whether he will come, but it is our duty to pay a visit. He was not present but we requested an attendant to convey our message, which was to vote for us,” said Mondal.
A senior official said incorporated areas of Bolpur municipality had been treated as high-profile zones as a large number of old-timers of Santiniketan reside there.
Apart from Sen, the ward reportedly has several other NRI voters. Candidates in the area have reportedly been trying to reach several of them via phone or email with their campaign messages.
Sources close to the Nobel laureate in Santiniketan, however, said he had no plans to visit Santiniketan this month. The civic polls are scheduled for February 27.
A large portion of Santiniketan, including the Sripally, Ratan Pally and Shyambati areas, are reputed as culturally integral to Santiniketan and were under the panchayat for years. This year, those pockets were incorporated into Bolpur municipality. Areas including Prantik and Goalpara — where several Calcuttans own vacation or retirement homes — have also been brought under the same civic body.
Sources said residents of the area had registered several complaints regarding the lack of civic amenities like roads, street lights, garbage disposal and drinking water.
“Most of the roads in our area are not metalled. There is the problem of streetlights, which is a problem mainly for elderly people living here. We expect that the civic body would give us all such amenities,” said Sudripta Tagore, a descendant of the Tagore family and a resident of the Ratan Pally area.
The demand to include those areas into the Bolpur civic body was not new, and the process was started at least nine years ago when Bolpur MLA Chandranath Sinha sent a proposal to the state government.
Prantik and Goalpara became a destination for tourists and residents from Calcutta, which increased the price of land. However, the crisis of amenities is still prominent in those pockets several years later.
“We can’t walk through these muddied roads. We have repeatedly appealed to senior officials of the district and local panchayats but all went in vain and we are living a life battling several odds. We are hopeful of getting bare minimum services like proper roads and street lights from the civic body,” said Pranab Sarkar, a retired physician who owns a house in Prantik and has been living there for years.
