Nandigram and Netai, two names considered the first and the final nails in the coffin of the 34-year Left Front regime in Bengal, are a telling tale of contrast for BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, once Mamata Banerjee’s aide and torchbearer in the region.
In Nandigram, Adhikari’s collaborators in the anti-land acquisition movement are forced to go into hiding to avoid arrests in murder cases from the movement era, reopened recently through judicial intervention brought on by a BJP candidate.
In Netai, then CPM rivals of Adhikari are now his comrades in the saffron camp.
Netai, a remote village by the bank the Kansabati, witnessed indiscriminate firing, allegedly by the CPM, on protesting villagers, which claimed nine lives and injured 28, on January 7, 2011.
The CPM had allegedly sheltered a group of gunmen for their training to ward off a Maoist attack on the house of then CPM leader Rathin Dandapat. The villagers who came to know about the gunmen had gone to protest in a group, when they had allegedly opened fire.
Mamata, then the Union railways minister in UPA II, had rushed to the village along with Adhikari, and went to town with the issue later, turning it into a major poll plank against the CPM and defeated it, that summer.
After she came to the power, Adhikari was the leader responsible for looking after Netai, especially the kin of the slain. A member from each family was given a government job after Trinamul came to power.
Although the villagers, including the bereaved families, acknowledge the contribution of Adhikari, they are not ready to join the BJP after his desertion, as the CPM workers and leaders, whose aides had allegedly opened fire on innocent villagers, are now Adhikari’s colleagues in the BJP.
Trinamul leaders claimed Netai is now a thorn in Adhikari’s side.
“We have no problem with Suvenduda. We were ready to join him if he floated a new party. But he betrayed us by joining the BJP, which now shelters the killer of my father. Now, it is ours solemn duty is to make Suvenduda lose,” said a member of the Netai Shahid Smriti Raksha Committee.
In the last Lok Sabha polls, Trinamul had secured a lead in Netai, by over 800 votes.
Dwarakanath Panda, president of the Committee, said: “We are grateful to both our chief minister and Suvendu. But he has now chosen a different political platform, which we have no interest in.”
Asked if it was largely because of the former CPM workers who are now in the BJP with Adhikari, Panda agreed.
Debu Sen, son of Dhiren Sen, one of those slain in the Netai incident, asked how he could join the BJP, especially after Mamata ensured a state government job for him.
At a March 17 rally in Lalgarh, Mamata also underscored this issue.
“The CPM’s goons are now the BJP’s leaders… so, don’t trust them at all. If you make that mistake, they will bring back that era of fear, like before 2011,” she had said.
The house of now imprisoned Rathin Dandapat, from where the alleged firing took place, has only one resident, his 80-year-old mother Madhuri Dandapat.
“I did not go to any government camps. I don’t take any government aid. My son is still in jail. Nobody comes to my home to check on me,” she said, claiming her son was not even present when the alleged incident took place in 2011.
The BJP acknowledged that the CPM workers in Netai had joined the saffron camp, but ruled out the local discontent over that as a factor, asserting that the fight was between Mamata’s Trinamul and Narendra Modi’s BJP.
“There is no longer any CPM in Netai. All CPM leaders and workers are now with us. We will defeat Trinamul in Netai, like elsewhere in Bengal,” said Tufan Mahata, the BJP’s Jhargram unit chief.
