CPI(M)’s battle to save its bastion of Jadavpur

Kolkata, Apr 05 (PTI):
At one time Jadavpur used to be called the ‘Leningrad of Calcutta’. Now it is the setting for an epic battle between CPI(M), which is trying to resuscitate its political fortunes in West Bengal, and Trinamool Congress that is trying desperately to get enough seats to ward off its main rival BJP, whose saffron surge has unnerved the ruling party, ten years since it uprooted the Left rule in the state.
The upcoming election to the Jadavpur assembly seat in the southern suburbs of Kolkata on April 10 is perhaps symbolic of the larger battle for Bengal.
The CPI(M) is fighting to protect its last bastion in the eastern metropolis after losing all other assembly constituencies falling under the jurisdiction of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) to TMC. Jadavpur is the only seat that it managed to regain in the city in 2016.
However, in the 2019 election to the Jadavpur Lok Sabha constituency, Left Front candidate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya had trailed by over 12,000 votes to TMC’s Mimi Chakraborty in the namesake assembly seat.
For the TMC, the fight is to regain the assembly seat it had lost to the CPI(M) in 2016 after snatching it from the then chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya in 2011 when the party had stormed to power, ending the 34-year Left rule.
Winning the seat will also be symbolic for the BJP as Jadavpur University, known as the stronghold of the Left and ultra-Left students unions and where Union minister and nominee in neighbouring Tollygunge seat Babul Supriyo was heckled in 2019, is the centrepiece of the constituency.
It is one of the few seats in and around Kolkata which will witness a three-cornered contest. However, on the ground, problems faced by the locals may play a more important role than political or ideological symbolism.
Sitting MLA Sujan Chakraborty, who had in 2016 clinched the seat from TMC’s Manish Gupta, who in turn had defeated Bhattacharya in 2011, is going to the polls with issues like unemployment, the law and order situation and fuel price rise.
Jadavpur, which has over 2.69 lakh voters, is dominated by descendants of people who had migrated from erstwhile East Bengal and then East Pakistan in waves following Partition in 1947.
A feeling of deprivation among the refugee settlers saw Jadavpur turning decisively towards the Left when the first Jukta Front or United Front rode to power in 1967. The seat has since then remained a Left bastion, electing CPI(M) candidates, including Bhattacharya, who won five times since 1987.
The BJP on the other hand is trying to muscle in by reviving the refugee feeling, harping on its poll plank of implementation of CAA. It is to be seen how much the promise of giving citizenship cuts ice with the erstwhile refugees.