| Mamata Banerjee sits in front of her modest house in Kalighat, having called a press conference at the exact time the five-phase election dates are being announced on her black-and-white portable TV set. She turns to the reporters and remarks, smiling, "We might not have fared well in one-dayers, but this election is a five-day Test match." That was when Banerjee was almost sure she'd be able to forge an alliance strong enough to combat the Left, and the Left's campaign, for its part, was running like a well-oiled machine. A lot has changed since. It has now become a question of what constitutes Banerjee's team, and whether the Left will have all its wickets intact, before the elections. The sudden death of Anil Biswas, the CPI(M)'s state secretary, has changed too many things for the well-entrenched Left Front, just as the failure of the grand opposition alliance has left Banerjee hoping against hope. For the shell-shocked CPI(M), the biggest question following Biswas' death was: who will lead the campaign? That has now been decided. The CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat, after an emergency meeting with state leaders, announced that Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya will now share the duties with Politburo member Biman Bose. The Left campaign is already in full swing. Election graffiti may have been banned, but government advertising has quite made up for it. Huge banners and posters proclaim, not without substance, how the West Bengal Government is the government of the future, and how it has balanced agriculture and industry in the last few years for optimum development. That the "country's number one chief minister" is the Left's trump card is evident in the poll campaigning, which is hinged on Bhattacharya as the face of the party. The "office of profit" controversy, which led UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to resign last week, is the other issue that has the CPI(M) on the back foot-11 of its members of Parliament, including Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and veteran leader Nilotpal Basu, are among the 40 who have been found to be holding such offices. The Trinamool Congress is definitely not letting go of such an issue and Banerjee has already demanded the MPs' resignation from Parliament. But, despite the current setbacks, the biggest advantage the Left has got is from the Opposition itself. As senior Trinamool leader Sougata Roy puts it, "What could have been a difficult election for the CPI(M) has been made easy by the failure of the non-Left parties to unite." The Opposition parties are all going their separate ways. The Congress has now decided to field candidates in most of the 294 seats. The Trinamool, which now calls itself and its allies the "Gana Front", has so far announced the names of 193 candidates, having left eight candidatures for the small partners of the Front. Out of the remaining 93, the BJP will contest 32. The Trinamool has left the rest vacant owing to the informal seat-sharing arrangement with the Congress and other smaller parties. "A clear picture is yet to come out, but a lot can happen in the coming weeks," says Roy optimistically. It is clear that both the Trinamool and the Congress-who had a tie-up in the last elections-are keeping their doors open, the only point of contention being the inclusion or non-inclusion of the BJP in the mahajot. For now, even though there have been serious differences over seat sharing with the BJP, the Trinamool is sticking to its NDA ally. That the Government is not in for a major change this time around is evident. If, however, the Election Commission is able to implement all its strictures fully and turn it into a model election, voters will have something to look forward to. Graffiti has been banned. Around 358 EC officers have been appointed observers (294 general, one for each constituency and 64 expenditure, one for each subdivision). These observers will arrive on the last day of nomination and stay till the end of the last poll/re-poll. Not just that, polling booths within 200 m of party offices have been shifted. No ballot box will be situated near a door or a window. Photography and videography inside booths have been banned. No candidate will be allowed to stay in his constituency after the last day of campaigning. Central forces will also be deployed. Although some senior Left leaders have called the last diktat "undemocratic", it does ensure the elections will be as fool proof as possible. It is a young West Bengal which will be voting this time. Out of the roughly five crore voters the state has, a third is below the age of 40. The only government that 50 per cent of the voters have seen is the Left Government, the only chief ministers Jyoti Basu and Bhattacharya. It remains to be seen whether this familiarity has bred contempt, or further consent.
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