The Battle of Behrampore: Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury's Last Stand in Bengal's Political Arena

Regardless of the results of this unforgiving election summer, the courageous and unwavering 68-year-old man with a fedora must be remembered for his courageous struggle to the very end in Bengal's rich and diverse political history.

Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury would have been forgiven a certain amount of war fatigue after giving it his all in five consecutive general elections at Behrampore (he hasn't experienced defeat in 25 years). However, he stays loyal to his name—adhir, which translates to "impatient" in Bengali—and may disgrace teenagers with the extent to which he has gone to secure his sixth victory.

In an effort to prevent May 13 from becoming his Waterloo, the Congress's Bengal legatus legionis has been working sixteen or more hours a day to protect his citadel, which is located 40 kilometers from the famous Plassey conflict from 1757.

"I will either win, which I believe I should, or quit politics," declared the maverick, who is described as flamboyant by fans and odd by detractors. His political career started when he was a high school student who was influenced by Naxalism. The autodidact will amaze skeptics with his understanding of economics, history, literature, pop culture, and football—aside from parliamentary democracy, of course—despite leaving the Gorabazar Iswar Chandra Institution in 1970, following Class IX.

The rival of the Bengal chief minister, who said, "If I do win, Mamata Banerjee has to admit that it's her defeat," before departing his Cossimbazar Raj home for yet another day of rallies, road shows, and door-to-door campaigning. "The CPM will win in Murshidabad, and the Congress will win in Behrampore and Jangipur."

Mamata and Chowdhury have been blaming one another for months of being the main dismantler of a seat-sharing agreement between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress.

Despite being a significant obstacle for Narendra Modi during his time as the Congressman's leader in the 17th Lok Sabha, Chowdhury's defamatory claims that he was an agent of the Sangh parivar are still coming in thick and fast from Mamata. In an attempt to maintain his political reputation as untarnished as his excessively beautiful linen shirts, he dismisses with a trademark sneer the idea that anyone but Mamata was the cause of the INDIA bloc's collapse in Bengal.

However, the battle in Behrampore, where the Congress failed to win any of the seven Assembly constituencies in 2021, is undoubtedly challenging for the man his supporters refer to as "Robin Hood" (his critics nickname him the "Nawab of Murshidabad").

First up for Chowdhury is a formidable opponent in the shape of Yusuf Pathan of Trinamool, a devout Muslim who was a member of the Indian teams that won the 2011 ODI World Cup and the 2007 T20 World Cup. Sixty percent of voters in Behrampore are Muslims.

Mamata has given former Chowdhury protégé Apurba "David" Sarkar, a four-time Kandi MLA and unsuccessful 2019 Trinamool candidate, the task of guaranteeing victory.

"He (Chowdhury) irritates everyone with corny allusions to Plassey... likes to imagine himself as Robert Clive or Mir Jafar, and his opponents as Siraj ud-Daulah. However, consider this from a biblical perspective. He emphasized how he had reduced Chowdhury's victory margin from 3.56 lakh in 2014 to less than 81,000 in 2019, saying, "David will eventually fell the Goliath." The seven Assembly segments produced a vote loss of more than 2.5 lakh for the Congress in 2021.

For the first time since Independence, the Congress had no seats in the Assembly under Chowdhury's leadership as state president. He is frequently held accountable for turning the Grand Old Party—unquestionably the main opposition in Bengal until Mamata founded her breakaway party in 1998—into a "MaMu" party, which implies that it only existed in Malda and Murshidabad.

So why did he still insist on staying partners with the CPM that he had formerly fiercely opposed, even if doing so would have increased his winnability through an agreement with Mamata?

"Now the Trinamool's damaad (sons-in-law) army is made up of the CPM's hooligan hordes, known as harmaad. In addition, I can't see ever depending on Mamata again given the manner she attempted to destroy the Congress in Bengal after becoming our friend in 2011," the man remarked.

The chief planner of the Congress-Left truck in Bengal continued, "Unlike her, there isn't the slightest doubt in the Left's secular credentials, or in its sincerity in the fight against the saffron regime." "The Congress will win seven seats in Bengal in this alliance."

Consequently, just ten kilometers distant, in the ancient plains of Murshidabad, a beaming Chowdhury was spotted donning a hammer-sickle-star uttoriyo and physically striding hand in hand with CPM state secretary Md. Salim, who is running from the next constituency.

Salim, the other prominent anti-Mamata figure in Bengal who is not affiliated with the BJP, is heavily dependent on the results of the May 7 election.

The 66-year-old member of the Politburo is still optimistic in his ability to defeat Abu Taher Khan of the Trinamool, who took the seat away from the Left in 2019.

"I don't see any reason to be pessimistic," he remarked during a campaign drill close to the 18th-century Katra Masjid in the Kila Nizamat region. Up until British colonization, the Nawabs governed undivided Bengal, which stretched from Mrauk U in Myanmar to Hajipur in Bihar.

Within assessments, CPM insiders concede that Salim's relative advantage stemmed mainly from his Muslim identity and his anti-BJP and anti-Trinamool stance in a constituency where 72% of the population is Muslim.

"Salimda ought to have done well in Jalangi, Domkal, and (Nadia's) Karimpur. He has a good chance if the Congress votes in Raninagar and Hariharpara were moved appropriately, according to a member of the CPM district committee. "This is the one seat in Bengal that we can genuinely win this time."

All three INDIA constituents may be united by a single belief, which is their evaluation of the BJP's prospects in the district.

David, the candidate for Trinamool, essentially repeated his former Congress mentor, Gouri Shankar Ghosh (in Murshidabad) and Nirmal Kumar Saha (in Behrampur), saying that "both (BJP nominees) will finish a distant third."

"Here, the BJP is going to humiliate itself. Its main weapon is polarization," remarked Badaruddoza Khan, a former Murshidabad MP for the CPM.

Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Press Time staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.