For Singur, it's a lull before the storm

After the much-discussed fate of the Nandigram Assembly segment, which went to the polls on April 1 and witnessed Mamata Banerjee and Suvendu Adhikari locking horns, Singur will go to the polls in the fourth phase on April 10. Which way will the second signature seat of Bengal swing? writes Dipankar Bose, News Coordinator, ETV Bharat

West Bengal: Singur, which had grabbed international headlines and laid the foundation stone for Mamata Banerjee to outsmart the Left Front and ascend to the hustings of the state. Mamata's agitation since 2006 against the Left's land acquisition for an automobile unit of Tata Motors has paid many dividends for her as well as her Trinamool Congress. But, Saturday's election could be a different ball game for the Trinamool supremo.

Trinamool Congress had a spectacular run in Singur since 2001 when it fielded Rabindranath Bhattacharjee, a local school teacher and a respectable figure of the predominantly agrarian locality. Bhattacharjee won the seat for four consecutive terms till 2016. The 'Master Moshai' (teacher) of Singur had strongly backed Mamata's agitation against land acquisition and many say, he was one of the most effective persons who helped to sway the popular mood in favour of Mamata Banerjee.

But, the Singur of 2021 is much different from 2016.

The 89-year-old 'Master Moshai' of Singur has been sounding different for a year and eventually switched over to the BJP when Mamata denied him a ticket this time. Trinamool's reason was simple - Rabindranath has aged and was not physically fit to take the strenuous task of campaigning which is required in an Assembly election.

BJP promptly gave the teacher a ticket from Singur, pitting him against Becharam Manna, the convenor of Krishi Jami Raksha Samiti. Manna is also the sitting Trinamool MLA from the neighbouring Haripal seat, where Mamata had chosen his wife Karabi to contest the polls. In fact, any political watcher of Bengal would say Becharam Manna in Singur is what Suvendu Adhikari was to Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram. He knows Singur best and with his extensive ground network, it was evident that he would be the first choice of the saffron party in its effort to break Trinamool's consolidation in the seat. The grapevine was, BJP had opened dialogue with Manna ahead of Bhattacharjee, but the former refused to switch sides. Hence, the teacher is now donning the saffron robe.

The numbers, however, throw up interesting electoral mathematics in Singur. The one-time bastion of Mamata Banerjee had a different tale to tell after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Not only did the BJP end with stunning numbers having bagged 18 seats in the state, Locket Chatterjee, the BJP candidate from Hooghly parliamentary constituency, led from the Singur Assembly segment by nearly 11,000 votes. Though the slide first became evident in 2016 when Trinamool's vote share slipped to 50 per cent from the 2011 vote share of 57.61 per cent, Mamata would have never dreamt of a loss from Singur in her wildest dreams. But, as the saying goes, truth is always stranger than fiction. Mamata had lost from Singur in 2019.

The anger was palpable across the villages which make up the Assembly segment. The promised jobs by Tata Motors never landed for the youth. Though the acquired land was returned by the Trinamool government after a five-year legal battle with the Tatas, yet most of it has been rendered unfit for cultivation. Singur is a battered land, both inside and outside. Coupled with all these was the issue of corruption at the grassroots level, which had robbed Trinamool Congress of its popular support from the land, which had turned into a waterloo for the Left and an indelible signature to power for Mamata Banerjee.

Then there is the young candidate of the Left this time. 27-year-old former state secretary of the SFI, Srijan Bhattacharya, has brought freshness to the aged campaign and his penetration at the grassroots has placed him firmly on the poll spectrum of Singur, barely 40 km from bustling Kolkata. An erudite Srijan will surely dig deep into both Trinamool and BJP vote pockets in Singur, which has around 8 per cent of the minority Muslim population.

Amid all the high pitch 'Khela Hobe' (the game is on) slogan of Mamata Banerjee and call for 'Ashol Poriborton' (real change) of the Modi-Shah duo, one thing is strikingly missing in Singur. The ubiquitous 'hawa' factor, which sways every Bengal poll. There is practically no 'Hawa' (wind) blowing in favour of any party over the abandoned Tata Motors site or the paddy fields and thatched houses, tucked away at a distance from the zooming Durgapur Expressway.

In the booths of Singur, every vote will count for Mamata, her one-time comrade-in-arms and the now aged 'Master Moshai' as well as the Left's young gun.