The importance of Jadavpur, and why CPM has to win it back

The importance of this seat for the party, has at its heart the dichotomy of past and present that needs to be navigated by leaders, contesting elections for the first time in three decades, as an opposition.

The sheer shock that followed the seemingly impossible election result that saw the Left lose their hitherto absolute and unchallenged 44-year-old command over the Jadavpur Assembly segment in 2011 hasn’t completely faded. It is now turning instead into a grim determination to wrest back the seat, once represented by former CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee from 1987 to 2011.

The importance of this seat for the party, has at its heart the dichotomy of past and present that needs to be navigated by leaders, contesting elections for the first time in three decades, as an opposition. The CPI(M) confirmed that Bhattacharjee will not contest elections, a decision made by the party headquarters in line with their admission for the need to embrace “the youth”, “social media” and the future. But at the Jadavpur Assembly segment there is simply no getting away from history.

Take for instance Shankar Gupta, the Jadavpur MLA from 1982-87, political secretary to chief minister Jyoti Basu and the minister of power in the second Left front government. As a student in the sixties, Gupta had stood up at a speech Field Marshall K M Cariappa despite the crackdown on communists and said, “I am Sankar Gupta, I am a communist.” The statement, even in today’s age of the Left’s waning influence in West Bengal, rarely fails to draw proud smiles at Jadavpur.

Gupta was followed by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at the Assembly, while the Jadavpur parliamentary segment has been represented by CPI leader Indrajit Gupta and former Lok Sabha speak and CPM leader Somnath Chatterjee. This was also the seat that saw Mamata Banerjee emerge as a force to recon with her after landslide victory against Somnath Chatterjee here. Others who have represented the seat at the Parliament include Dr Malini Bhattacharya – a Jadavpur academic at whose hands Mamata Banerjee suffered her only political defeat and Netaji kin Krishna Bose and incumbent MP Suguta Bose.

Ahead of the 2016 Assembly elections, the CPI-M has fielded former MP from the seat Dr Sujan Chakraborty – a biomedical engineer who has risen up the ranks in the party, serving as an MP at Jadavpur until his defeat in 2009. But, party sources said the decision to field Chakraborty wasn’t unanimous. Sources maintained that Bhattacharjee had asked CPM state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra to contest from this seat, citing the need for an “accepted Left face” to lead from the front. But with Mishra remaining unwilling and party headquarters insisting on ‘younger faces’, the party decided to field Chakraborty, one of the ‘younger’ old timers in the party.

The need for a ‘young face’ at Jadavpur is further cemented by the fact that among the universities in Bengal, Jadavpur University remains on of the last Left bastions, with the student union there holding out to constant pressures from the TMC’s student body and the ABVP. If the next generation of Left leaders has to come in Bengal, admit leaders, they will have to come from Jadavpur University.

But first, the 56-year-old Chakraborty is up against some history as he sets up to challenge former TMC’s Manish Gupta, the IAS officer who had historically defeated his ‘former boss’ Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and also worked as chief secretary to Jyoti Basu.