It is ‘Adi’ versus ‘Nabo’. In 1969, after Indira Gandhi split the Congress, the two factions of the party were initially known in Bengal as ‘Adi Congress’ and ‘Nabo Congress’. Now, 44 years later, the same tags have come to haunt the Trinamool Congress (TMC), as the party is virtually split between the old-timers and newcomers. So much so, that the internecine clashes within TMC have become a regular feature in rural Bengal. The beaten and demoralized CPI (M) is now not in a position to play the role of political opposition in some of the districts. The vacuum created by their inactivity is now been steadily filled up by the faction-fights within the ruling party TMC. Clashes between different groups of TMC have now become a regular feature in districts of south Bengal.
The worst affected districts are West Midnapur, East Midnapur, Howrah, South 24 Parganas, Hoogly, Burdwan, Nadia and Murshidabad.
The pattern of the intra-party clashes is indicative of the fact that a bitter power struggle is going on between the old-timers and the newcomers. In rural Bengal, every school has to elect six members from the parents to its management board through annual election. The political parties do take the school board election seriously, as it helps them to control and manipulate the local populace to garner votes for the Panchayat, Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. The CPI (M) used to hold sway over these elections till Singur and Nandigram movements happened. Since 2008, they started steadily losing their grip over the rural people and were replaced by the TMC. Now, the CPI(M) is so disarrayed that in most of the school board elections they could not put up their candidates, thus creating a situation where the ruling TMC could win most of the seats unopposed. Instead, in almost all school board elections now witness contest between ‘Adi’ and ‘Nabo’ TMC candidates.
On Sunday last, election was held to Lalgarh’s Nachhipur high school’s management board, where the local TMC minister Sukumar Hansda had put up six candidates. But they were opposed by another faction of TMC who put up a separate panel. The police had to be deployed to the school to keep the situation under control. But in Chandrakona and Garbeta, two other blocks in the same districts, blood were spilt in similar situation. In Chandrakona’s Nayabasat high school election on Friday, the police had to resort to lathicharge to disperse the crowd when the two factions of the TMC fought pitched battle on roads over the election. Eight days back, in Garbeta nine people were injured, when armed groups of two TMC factions fought each other during the election of a local school, six of them were later admitted to hospital with serious injury. Similar violent clashes took place in recent past in Murshidabad, Nadia, Burdwan and Hoogly. In South 24 Parganas, one TMC activist was killed in an intra party clash.
A TMC leader, who does not want to be identified, says, in most of the cases, clashes took place between the ‘Adi’ and ‘Nabo’. In the last two years there has been a steady influx of people who left CPI (M) and joined TMC. The number grew by leaps and bound after the assembly election.
