Fear still reigns in Nandigram

Biswabrata Goswami

SONACHURA, April 23: In Nandigram’s villages, people still live in fear of the CPI-M and police. Opposition candidates who have filed their nomination papers for the forthcoming panchayat poll fear they may have to cancel their candidature should the pressure become unbearable.
Mr Sheikh Alam, a Trinamul leader, said: “It is not the CPI-M that we fear but the support it enjoys from police. Most of the attacks on villagers here took place in the presence of policemen. Given the deteriorating situation, we might withdraw our candidature at the last minute. We have intimated this to the local SDO.”

An aged woman draped in a saree slammed shut the window of her mud house when this correspondent asked for a reaction on the political scene in her home ~ Sonachura village, Nandigram. Others, who were nervously peeping out of their houses, did the same. A middle-aged man came out of his house and whispered, “Please don’t stay here for long. They will beat us and torture our women if they see us talking to outsiders. Even you may be attacked.”

In the Nandigram-I block of Midnapore East, “they” are CPI-M cadres. A few days before “normalcy” returned to these villages following the CPI-M’s bloody recapture of Nandigram in early November last year, the political scene was quite different from what it is now. The entire area was a stronghold of the Bhumi Ucched Protirodh Committee (BUPC). But after re-establishing their political dominance, the CPI-M is now desperately trying to hold on to these villagers by following a three-pronged strategy.

First, they chalked out plans to win the villagers’ faith by implementing various Central development schemes. They allocated huge funds for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and various health schemes through panchayats.

Secondly, they worked insidiously to break the Opposition’s unity. Foreseeing a split in the BUPC over selection of candidates for the forthcoming panchayat poll, they filed the nomination of a Trinamul Congress leader in Nandigram I panchayat samity, Mr Ranjan Patra, as an independent candidate backed by the Left Front. The CPI-M leadership here tactfully nominated many new candidates who are mostly members of anti-Left Front families in those areas to cut a large piece out of the Opposition’s vote-bank.

Trinamul Congress chief Miss Mamata Banerjee has decided to keep both the BJP and the Congress at a distance during the panchayat polls. As most anti-Left parties are also members of the BUPC, there are rifts in the Opposition; many Opposition candidates have filed nominations as independents, which has helped the CPI-M to penetrate into Nandigram’s villages.
Thirdly, the CPI-M is unleashing “silent” terror among supporters of the Opposition. They have planned to enlist the help of local police to arrest prominent Opposition workers and leaders in connection with old cases ahead of the polls.

The CPI-M has been successfully able to unite its partners and solve seat-sharing disputes. Of 115-gram panchayat seats in Nandigram, the CPI-M has fielded 75 candidates, the CPI has fielded 33, the RSP three, the FB two and the SP has fielded two candidates. Of 27 panchayat samity seats, the CPI-M has filed nominations in 21, the CPI in five and the RSP in one, while in the two Zilla Parishad seats, the CPI-M and the CPI have fielded one candidate each.

Although the CPI-M-sponsored terror in Nandigram had united the Opposition and the CPI-M lost heavily in school committee elections, the Opposition will not be able to retain their influence unless they can retain their unity in the panchayat poll.