Re-entry for Amar Chowdhury not to be easy

Barrackpore, Apr 24 : Batting on a sticky wicket, PWD minister and veteran Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) leader Amar Chowdhury will have to snuff out a steep challenge fron Trinamool Congress' Young turk Atin Ghosh from Baranagar Assembly constituency.

The 78-year old Mr Chowdhury scrapped past Mr Ghosh by a thin margin of 2,541 votes in the last Assembly election.

With the Election Commission girding its loins and plugging all '' loop holes,'' the going for Mr Chowdhury would be tough this time. But the party machinery is sparing no pains to ensure Mr Chowdhury's re-entry into the house for the third time in a row.

Meanwhile, the opposition leaders in the area have prepared themselves to resist any attempt of rigging in the booths to be auarded by the Central Paramilitary Force while the Election Commission observers have been asked to maintain strict vigil during polling.

Mr Chowdhury had never tasted defeat since 1991 byelection following the death of former PWD Minister Matish Roy and was inducted in the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's cabinet after dropping Kshiti Goswami in 2001.

Baranagar turned a key constituency in the state as it was represented by veteran Marxist leader and former chief minister Jyoti Basu. It was left to the RSP since the 1982 elections, as Mr Basu shifted to Satgachhia after the 1972 debacle during Mr Siddhartha Sankar Roy's Congress Ministry. The CPI(M) won 14 in the controversial elections and the Congress returned to power with the Baranagar Constituency in their fold.

Incidentally, RSP, with the help of the Left Front allies saw Mr Chowdhury winning elections by defeating the nearest Congress contenders since 1996. However, the margin between the winners and the nearest contenders gradually decreased from 7,890 to 2,541 votes in 2001.

While Mr Ghosh is highlighting the failures of Mr Chowdhury and he is attaching maximum paiority to the development of his constituency, which had so far remianed ''neglected.'' Mr Chowdhury is listing his ministry's achievement in the past five years, particularly in the field of roads.

The politically conscious electorate of urban industrial area like Baranagar hardly consider any local issue as the factor of choosing their representative in the state Assembly elections and usually run with their firm conviction of politics. The results of previous elections in the constituency indicated polarisation of voters.

UNI