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Bengal, Kerala get set for Assembly polls
by Ajitha Menon and K Ashik

      Kolkata/Thiruvananthapuram: Voters in 125 Assembly constituencies of West Bengal and Kerala will queue up on Saturday morning to exercise their franchise to elect 757 candidates. In West Bengal, 66 Assembly constituencies of four southern districts -- Howrah, Hooghly, East Midnapore and Murshidabad - will hold elections amidst tight security. In all, 348 candidates, including 28 women are in the electoral fray for the second phase of polls in the eastern state. The first phase of polls on April 17 saw a 70 percent voter turnout in 45 constituencies covering West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia districts. Among the four districts, Hooghly has 19 seats followed by 16 each in Howrah and East Midnapore and 15 in Nadia. The total number of voters likely to exercise their franchise is 11.3 million. A total of 122,99 polling stations have been set up in the four districts. The total electorate in West Bengal is 48.9 million. The five-phase elections end on May 8.

     The main battle will be between the Left Front led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerjee. While in the first phase of polls, the dominating issues were Maoist violence and underdevelopment; the second phase of polls is likely to focus on industrial sickness, problems of law and order, shoddy civic amenities, Bangladeshi infiltration and erosion of the Ganges river. According to experts, Howrah and Hooghly have been facing industrial sickness for decades, leading to the closure of hundreds of factories. In Howrah, which is also Kolkata's twin city, civic amenities are poor. Of late, however, Howrah has come up with a food processing park, an IT hub and a motorbike factory by the Indonesian giant Salem besides a modern township by the same group. Prominent contenders in the second phase include CPI-M's Fire Services Minister Pratim Chatterjee (Tarakeshwar in Hooghly) and Animal Resource Development Minister Anisur Rahman (Domkol in Murshidabad) besides Atish Sinha (Congress, Kandhi, Murshidabad) and five-time winner from Howrah Central Ambika Roy (Trinamool).

     In Kerala, Saturday's first phase of polling will involve 59 constituencies in the six districts of Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha, Kottayam and Idukki. An estimated 8.4 million voters, including 4.3 million women, will exercise their franchise to elect 409 candidates who are in the fray. Kerala's total electorate is 21.48 million. Election Commission officials said the voting would take place in 8,292 polling booths, using 9,121 electronic voting machines. Preliminary assessments suggest that the Left Democratic Front (LDF) led by chief ministerial contender V.S. Achuthanandan is all set to bounce back after five years. At least three pre-poll surveys have predicted an LDF sweep, saying it could win close to 100 seats in the 140-member State assembly. Of the 59 seats, the Congress-led UDF won 45 in 2001. The first phase on Saturday is crucial because over the years it has been noticed that whoever wins the most seats in the southern districts, especially in Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram, emerges the winner.

    For the first time, digital cameras would come up in the polling booths in all three phases. The electoral fortunes of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, nine of his colleagues in the UDF cabinet and some of the prominent CPI-M leaders will be decided tomorrow. The UDF is seeking a second term on the plank of 'development' and growth achieved by the state in different sectors of economy, while The LDF is seeking to capitalise on the popularity Achuthanandan The issues before the voters of Kerala are many, and chief among them is education, which is the single most important factor determining the socio-economic hierarchy in the state. Though government initiatives in the past have raised literacy levels in the state, the educational infrastructure is now bursting at its seams. The privatization of education, especially higher and professional education, has resulted in the emergence of a class of people seeking to make the proverbial fast buck. In 2001, there were dozen engineering colleges. That has now increased to 84. Kerala has 72 self-financing engineering colleges, six medical colleges, six dental colleges, eight Ayurveda colleges, 17 pharmacy colleges and 42 nursing colleges. The battle on the electoral front as far as education is concerned, is centered on its uncontrollable commercialization and continued deprivation of the poorest of the poor.

     The second issue likely to dominate the polls is the crisis in Kerala's agriculture sector. Nearly 1500 farmers have committed suicide in the last five years because of poor crop yields. One third of the state's 3.2 crore population depends on agriculture for survival and sustenance. Eighty percent of the land is used for cultivation of export-oriented plantation crops, which experience volatility in terms of pricing. Paddy cultivation in Kerala, which is regarded as the Rice Bowl of the country, too has diminished because farmers don't find it renumerative enough. The conversion of the state's wetlands for cash crop production has , therefore, had a devastating impact on farmers, who have to sell their produce and prices well below the existing support level. Labour unrest is another issue that is likely to dominate the voting pattern in the southern state. It has been a proverbial problem since the time of India's independence.