Is Congress on the road to perdition in Bengal?

A sea of tricolour and hammer and sickle flags replete with crowds of men and women dancing to the sound of drum beats, progressed from this trading city’s Textile More crossing) to the Collectorate office, carrying with it the veteran Congress leader Adhir Chowdhury on his way to file his nomination papers for a sixth time.

Berhampore, a sprawling old town which has gobbled up earlier settlements of Cossimbazar, Gora and Khagra bazaar, has been Chowdhury’s bastion and one of Congress’s last two citadels the other being Maldah South) in a state which in 1951 sent 24 Congress MPs out of a total of 34 MPs that West Bengal then had in the Lok Sabha.

Chowdhury in a white Panama hat to beat the scorching central Bengal heat, looked relaxed as he strode into the District Magistrate’s office to submit his papers. However, the surface calm could not hide the fact that the Congress and its leader in Bengal were a worried lot. At stake is not only Adhir Chowdhury’s Lok Sabha seat but also the grand old party’s very existence in Bengal.

The Congress’s Leader of the Opposition in the lower house, won the last 2019 election to the seat which comprises the city of Berhampore and a few adjoining towns and rural pockets with 45.5 per cent of the popular vote. Yet, this marked a decline of over 11 per cent of the votes he got a 10 years earlier when the Manmohan Singh government was in power. At the same time the combined vote of the TMC and the BJP was more than his vote, a sure sign that the politician with a Robin Hood’ image was losing his touch.