Morcha makes foray into ballot politics  Dooars win a snub to Buddha, says Gurung

Wilson Champromari on the Alipurduar College grounds after the results were announced. Picture by Anirban Choudhury TT, Nov. 10: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha today met with its first success in electoral politics with the victory of Wilson Champromari, the Independent it had backed in Kalchini. For the hill party, the conquest of the Dooars seat is a significant development ahead of the tripartite talks in Darjeeling on December 21. The Morcha support to Khageswar Roy of the Trinamul Congress in Rajgunj also resulted in Mamata Banerjee’s party securing its second MLA from north Bengal (the first being Ashok Mondal from Dinhata) in a seat that has been traditionally held by the CPM. “I remember chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee categorically challenging me to win an election when I had raised the issue of the Dooars (that the region should be part of Gorkhaland) at one of our meetings in Calcutta. He had snubbed us about Dooars and I had staged a walkout. The victory in Kalchini is a slap on Bhattacharjee’s face,” said Morcha president Bimal Gurung in Darjeeling today. “We will now say that there is a mandate for Gorkhaland even in the Dooars and this stand will figure prominently in the next round of talks,” he added. Even though the Morcha leadership is upbeat over the development, political observers feel that the Adivasi community, which forms around 40 per cent of the Dooars population, is opposed to the inclusion of the area in Gorkhaland, the new state that the hill party has been demanding. Observers said the candidate supported by the Morcha won because Adivasis, who had so far largely voted for the RSP, had for the first time put up an Independent to further the cause of their outfit, the Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad. “This resulted in the splitting of the Adivasi votes which earlier had largely gone (only) to the RSP,” an observer said. “The Adivasi votes split and the Nepali votes going en mass to the Morcha candidate, Wilson Champromari won the polls.” The Nepalis, who constitute about 30 per cent of the population and were RSP supporters once, consolidated their votes for the Morcha backed candidate. The Adivasi community had turned against the Left Front after the arrest of a number of Parishad leaders in clashes with the Morcha supporters earlier this year. “We have voted for the Left, but instead of supporting us the government arrested our people when we protested against the Morcha demand to include the Dooars in Gorkhaland,” a Parishad leader said. Kshiti Goswami, the public works minister from the RSP, admitted the alienation suffered by the Adivasis. “The Left has failed to address the problems of the Adivasis and they got alienated from us,” Goswami said. “That is again why they supported their own candidate and our votes got split in Kalchini.” The traditional winners of Kalchini, the RSP, has been pushed to the third place and the Congress to a distant fourth, with the Independent candidate supported by the Parishad bagging the runners-up position. Many believe that Gurung’s selection of Wilson, an Adivasi, proved to be a good choice as he managed to garner tribal votes, which helped him sail through. “Moreover, the manner in which the Morcha pressured the state government to open closed gardens acted as a positive move in the eyes of the voters. The Chinchula tea garden was reopened before the Pujas,” said an observer. In Rajgunj, Trinamul’s Khageswar Roy romped home to victory with the backing of the Morcha. In the last Lok Sabha polls, the Morcha backed BJP candidate had polled 33,000 votes but this time, the party polled a paltry 14,000 votes. Trinamul leader Partha Chatterjee dodged the question on whether the Morcha support had played a role in Rajgunj. “We did not seek any support and I do not want to comment. It was definitely the apathy of the state government that led that community to vote against them,” said Chatterjee. However, Gurung seemed to be happy with the Rajgunj outcome. “We had supported Trinamul Congress as we might have to talk to them in the future. After all, we cannot be rigid and our move has paid off,” the Morcha president said, hinting about the probable change in guard in 2011. Talks offer to Morcha on liquor ‘ban’ Chakrabarti with the players before the tournament in Siliguri on Tuesday. Picture by Kundan Yolmo TT, Siliguri, Nov. 10: Chief secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti has asked the Darjeeling district administration to hold talks with the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha on the banning of liquor in the hills and writing “Gorkhaland” on signboards ahead of the tripartite talks scheduled for December 21. “I have instructed the district magistrate and the district police chief to hold dialogues with those who are organising the movements like banning licit liquor and writing ‘Gorkhaland’ replacing the name of the state,” Chakrabarti told journalists here on the Morcha’s latest agitation programme in the hills. Earlier, the chief secretary inaugurated the Friendship Cup Football Tournament at the Mallaguri police line, which was organised to strengthen the police-public relationship. Chakrabarti said the government was always against setting up liquor shops in slums or tribal areas where most of the people were underprivileged. “But it is true that those who are engaged in selling illicit liquor will always try to get the licit liquor shops closed, which will encourage the illegal trade and increase the health hazards.” The chief secretary said replacing “West Bengal” with “Gorkhaland” on signboards of shops and establishments was “meaningless”. “I think installing a signboard with ‘Gorkhaland’ on it is meaningless, as we are all living in India and the name of the state is West Bengal. This is not going to establish anything,” he said. Chakrabarti said a similar situation had arisen in the hills earlier when number plates of vehicles were replaced. “It was also not acceptable. If a driver of a vehicle, which has a proper number plate, meets with an accident, the vehicle can be easily identified and action can be taken. But tracing out a vehicle with an inappropriate number plate isdifficult.” The chief secretary denied that the state was not taking any action against the Morcha’s agitation in the hills. “The government is always in favour of avoiding any confrontation with people and favours holding dialogues with them. When a process has been initiated to sort out a problem by holding a tripartite meeting, it is the responsibility of everybody to create a proper atmosphere for dialogues,” he said. Parishad strike today TT, Siliguri, Nov. 10: The Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad has called a 24-hour strike in the Dooars and the Terai tomorrow, to protest the arrest of nine of its supporters at Hasimara after a clash with Gorkha Janmukti Morcha members yesterday. John Barla, the president of the Dooars-Terai Coordination Committee of the Parishad, who announced the strike, demanded the unconditional release of their supporters. AT 7/10 Mamta Strikes CPM Dumb Subrata Naga Chowdhary,IE,10Nov Kolkata:The results of the bypolls in 10 Assembly seats in West Bengal — Mamata Banerjee’s party bagged seven — distinctly reflected the Trinamool Congress surge with a bigger vote share than in the Lok Sabha polls. The Trinamool Congress-Congress vote share increased from 7% in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls to almost 13% in these bypolls, according to initial estimates. Besides reflecting the trend of the Trinamool Congress gaining supremacy by the day, Tuesday’s results also showed how Mamata Banerjee fixed her ally Congress, which lost to Forward Bloc in Goalpokhor seat in what could be read as a “reverse current” to the present political wave in the state. With today’s spectacular show, Mamata has also pitched herself for the 2011 state Assembly polls with greater authority. Of the 10 seats, the Trinamool Congress won seven out of seven seats it contested and the Congress won one out of three it contested. The Forward Bloc was the only Left Front outfit to win a seat this time. One of the stunning outcomes was the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha-backed Independent candidate’s win in Kalchini, an Assembly seat in Jalpaiguri district. The RSP was the loser here. The CPM drew a blank in all the six seats it contested. In 2006, seven of these seats were held between the Trinamool and the Congress while the rest three were held by the Left Front — two by the CPM and one by the RSP. The most unexpected outcome was in Goalpokhor in Uttar Dinajpur that was held by one of Mamata’s known adversaries within the alliance — Deepa Dasmunshi of Congress and wife of Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi. Deepa won the Goalpokhor Assembly seat in 2006 with a margin of 8,000 votes but it fell vacant after she was elected to the Lok Sabha in May 2009 elections. But during the formation of the Siliguri Municipal Board, Deepa played a crucial role in roping in Left in favour of the Congress mayor, thus upsetting the Trinamool chief. The Goalpokhor bypoll was Mamata’s chance to settle scores and the final outcome did show it had gone out of Deepa’s control. The Forward Bloc candidate here not only bridged a deficit of 8,000 plus votes of 2006 but pulled off a victory by over 14,000 votes over the Congress candidate. A total of 22,000 voters have switched their allegiance and a sizeable chunk of them was believed to be from the Congress-Trinamool fold.  “This result is unexpected. We are analyzing how it happened. We have been able to partly identify the reasons. The facts would be placed before the right persons at the right moment,” said Dasmunshi, who sounded upset. Later, the Congress Pradesh Congress Committee leaders also said an inquiry would be held to look into Goalpokhor defeat. The outcome in Kalchini seat in Jalpaiguri was also significant. The mainstream contestants here ¿ RSP (had a sitting MLA) and the Congress came a poor third and fourth in terms of votes. The Kalchini seat was won by an Independent backed by the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha. The Adivasi Vikas Parishad , a North Bengal outfit of tribals settled mostly in the Dooars and terai region had put up a candidate, splitting the tribal votes among three candidates. The Independent, supported by the GJM, sailed through, reinforcing the Morcha’s claim of over the Dooars and terai region.  It also provides a handle to GJM to put the issue of jurisdictional control of Dooars and terai in the agenda during the proposed tripartite talks to he held in Darjeeling in December. For the CPM, most shocking loss was that of Belgachhia East where late Subash Chakrabarty’s wife Ramola lost to Trinamool’s Sujit Bose by a margin of over 28,000 votes. In 2006, Subash had managed to barely pull off a victory in a stiff contest. But in his death, the CPM lost its grip over the constituency that was held by him since 1977. CPM state secretary Biman Bose admitted: “People have voted against us. We will have to analyse the results in detail.” The margin of victory in many seats was read as an indication of the voter’s ire against the CPM. For instance, in Rajganj, a seat held by the CPM since 1977, the party lost to Trinamool by a margin of nearly 15,000 votes this time. In 2006, the CPM candidate had won by a margin of over 49,000 votes.  A beaming Mamata Banerjee said: “The alliance will continue. The people have given a clear verdict against the CPM. We will not let up as long as we don’t drive the Communists out of Bengal.”