The fight this time is mainly between the BJP and the Congress. This is highly evident in the holy town of Hardwar. Though the Samajwadi Party and BSP are in the fray, their presence is not being felt much. The BJP office here has distributed saffron sarees with the lotus printed on them, which has made campaigning easy for the workers. The Congress office is abuzz with activity with motorbikes with flags making the rounds frequently. During a rally in the holy town, Samajwadi leader Amar Singh took on the BJP and said that the Babri issue was being politicised by the BJP for narrow ends and that the people should be aware and not fall prey to such vote-mongering tactics.

The BJP is trying to adopt a strategy in some constituencies by which Hindu Mahasabha candidates are being set up alongwith the BJP nominee to cut into the Congress vote bank; Rampur Lok sabha seat near Nainital being a prime example. The Congress is organisationally weak and there is no coordination among the various leaders and their campaign offices and managers.

 It's CPM all the way in Darjeeling

Pallab Rajguru

There is no doubt about the prospects of the CPI (M) in the Darjeeling seat. The party candidate, S.P. Lepcha, is a hillman and has come into politics from teaching. His biggest advantage, apart from the fact that he is close to the people of his constituency, is that his rivals are in disarray; the Congress has been able to finalise its candidate only a few days back while the BJP-Trinamool man has no ties with the region at all. Thus the question that begs an answer in the district is who will come second after Lepcha. Till a few days back, there was not even a whiff of any campaigning by the other candidates though posters, buntings and graffiti in favour of Lepcha have been in abundance. Lepcha has taken to extensive door-to-door campaigning on which the party is putting the campaign thrust this time. Since the last Lok Sabha elections, this area has gone to the polls for the Hill Council as well as the Siliguri municipality elections and these have only succeeded in exposing the BJP-Trinamool charade. Chief minister Jyoti Basu has already addressed meetings in the plains of Islampur and Siliguri and the stress is to hold smaller meetings to do away with possibilities of washouts because of the monsoons.

Kargil has become a major issue in the constituency and the people are asking uncomfortable questions to the BJP-Trinamool combine about whether the war has actually ended with body after body of hill jawans being brought in from the war front. Is the Prime Minister lying that there is peace at hand? That is a major question here and one answer which is not being given a satisfactory answer by anybody in the BJP.

Midnapore still with Indrajit Gupta

Santanu Dey

Of the general alliance that the BJP and Trinamool Congress struck last time, one of the two exceptions was Midnapore. After much water has flowed, the two parties have forged an alliance here this time but the BJP candidate Manoranjan Dutta is not having a peaceful sleep. After all, this is Midnapore.

In 1977, the Janata Party candidate Sudhir Ghosal won with Left Front support defeating the CPI's Narayan Choubey. In 1980, with the CPI in the Front, Ghosal was trounced by Choubey himself who contested on a Front ticket. And that too, by a margin of over a lakh votes.

Obviously, the people had voted for the policies of the Front. That tradition has continued with the constituency returning Front candidates ever since 1977.Indeed, even in 1984, after the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the sympathy wave stopped here and Choubey won yet again with a huge margin of over 56,000 votes. Since 1989, however, Indrajit Gupta has been representing this seat. He has increased his margin of victory by wider levels every time for the four consecutive times that he has been elected from Midnapore. The margin now stands at over 2.75 lakhs.

Last time, both the Trinamool and the BJP had set up candidates and Gupta got 49.69 per cent of the votes. Nitish Sengupta of the Trinamool got 28.53 per cent while the BJP's Manoranjan Sengupta got 12.32 per cent. Even if the Trinamool and BJP vote shares are added up this time due to the alliance, even then Gupta will stand tall

Also, the Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee has stayed away from campaigning for the BJP in Midnapore and even the candidate has not been able to meet her. However, that does not matter in Midnapore, which will remain, with Gupta since anti-front alliances have never cut any ice with the masses here.

Vote for the boat

Tirthankar Biswas

It is a validation of India itself that people still see Kashmir as a tourist spot. The scars that the valley has endured, the wounds that the residents have seen fester within themselves could easily have turned the paradise on earth into a living hell; but it is a vindication of Indian democracy and the system that Kashmir has survived. Politics, terrorism and war have not been able to take away from Kashmir the lasting value of tourism; if nothing else, the valley sustains itself by its sheer repeat value. If you have once been to Kashmir, you will necessarily have to return. That is the magic of the valley. It beckons. And no amount of damage can keep it out of the tourist map of the world. The reasons to keep away from Kashmir are fewer than those are, which make you dream of the land of valleys and snow-kissed mountains.

How can one explain that during the time of war, an election is at least being held in Kashmir? And that, people, who should be huddled behind closed doors waiting for the next gunshell to burst upon their future, are actually queuing up to make a choice in front of poll booths? Even if in a trickle? The message goes out loud and clear; India lives and it lives through its system, which no terrorism can throw asunder. India votes and even while it does so, it sustains a hope that all is not lost.

Jammu and Kashmir has six Lok Sabha constituencies; five have already voted. One was countermanded after the killing of the Anantnag BJP candidate for which elections are to be held again on October 4. The Anantnag example is a test case of Kashmir's endurance. The killing of an election candidate is no extraordinary event in India; however, in a town ravaged by annihilations and extremism, when elections show one way to get out of the impasse, this could have been enough to push back any process to restore normalcy by more than what historians and analysts would like us to believe. Not so in Anantnag.

The CPI (M) is contesting the seat with Mohammed Yusuf Tarigami as its candidate. His rivals are Mufti Mohammed Sayeed of the Progressive Democratic Front and the National Conference's Lei Mohammed Nayek. The CPI (M) campaign, as this correspondent was witness to last week, has been novel; Tarigami goes to his rallies with only an hour's notice since he is a marked man. Obviously, the turnouts cannot be necessarily huge because of the nature of the campaign but the very fact that he is campaigning under such circumstances should be ample proof yet again that, like that dogged tourist to the valley, the riddles of politics have not confused the basic fabric of priorities in Kashmir.

Tarigami, a legislator from the Kolgaon Assembly segment, know this. He says, "For the last 50 years, Kashmir has lived on tourism. That is one potential that we cannot afford to lose. There has been no concrete political initiative to wrest control from the drift that has overtaken the political process in Kashmir. It is thus important to bring back peace at any cost. That is my singular political plank and campaign issue.''

Bringing back a sense of security in the people is thus a major task. There are some people who are still equal to the task. They should be given a chance. Tarigami is not alone. And as long as people want to see Kashmir return to being the land of dreams and romance, then his task will have the full support of the masses of India. A deserted Kashmir could well toll the death knell for India's image; if there are more people like Tarigami who realise this, then so much the better for all that is good about the country. If the houseboats on Dal Lake are allowed to do business, that will be a vote for India.

TALKING POINT

It is election time in West Bengal. A look at what election day on Sunday could offer

Sunday pinpricks

There have been many exit polls to the run-up to the elections. Nationwide, there have been forecasts; the BJP, by all accounts, fictionalised or trivialised, seems to be doing well in those constituencies where elections have already been held. In West Bengal, there has never been any need for such forecasts; whatever has been the outcome of elections for the last 23 years _ be it the Lok sabha or Assembly_ the results have been there for all to see. The Left Front has returned to power time and again and with mandates which have always proved pollsters wrong in their assumptions that the people are fools who are swayed by illegitimate politics going by the name of populism.

This Sunday, the voters of Bengal are again to be tested for the send time in a year. There is no point in talking about outcomes before the ballot has been cast; but one thing is for sure, whatever the result decides, it will be the people who shall be the final decider. But by the turn of events and way the campaign has unfolded this time, there seems to be no reason to believe that the people will give any reason to believe that they indeed have been misguided by the malicious propaganda machinery which has been unleashed before the die has been cast.

The floods have come on the eve of the elections. If nothing else, the disaster has proved that when it comes to security in the face of natural calamities and the safety of the people at large, it is the Left Front and its workers who have always been at the forefront. The deluge may have been used by the other parties to indulge in a game of brinkmanship to garner votes, but for the Front cadre force, this has been yet another occasion to prove that it is always at hand to help and bail out the people in times of distress.

This could prove one of the most major elections Bengal has ever had. While the BJP has consolidated its dangerous game plan throughout the nation and foisted a fascist regime on an unsuspecting people, it is here in Bengal that all wheels come full circle; raths or otherwise. It is here that the BJP is forced to see reason; it is here that its ally, the Trinamool Congress, is made to realise that communalism and sectarianism have no place in the hearts of the people of Bengal.

The nefarious objectives and designs of the BJP-Trinamool Congress have been many. The Trinamool has launched violent campaigns; indeed the CPI (M) general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet was attacked twice during his campaign trail. Obviously, the idea is to disallow a peaceful people's mandate; the Trinamool has realised that calumny after calumny heaped upon the Front in the name of constructive political campaigning have only boomeranged on it. The Trinamool has realised that it does not stand much of a chance in Bengal.

The Front campaign has been positive, led by the chief minister Jyoti Basu who has given a lie to assumptions and predictions about his ability to function by touring the state in a hurricane campaign trail which could leave leaders half his age gasping for breath. This has generated enough enthusiasm among the people and the turnouts at Basu's various meetings throughout the state are enough to predict which way the voter is inclined this time too.

The time has thus come. On Sunday, the people will decide. The mandate that awaits Bengal is momentous. The Front is convinced that there is no need to feel the pinpricks of the Trinamool-BJP as a thunderous response of the people to all that the combine may have to offer. In fact, the fact is just the opposite. These pinpricks are as much necessary for the survival of a political system in which opposition is taken to be a mandate for democracy. It would have been much better for the system if the Trinamool -BJP combine understood that pinpricks are to be treated just as they deserve to be: as a reminder of the existence of pins.

Cadres fight heavy rains, greedy Trinamool

The heavens have suddenly burst open in West Bengal with heavy rains inundating wide areas of the state since Friday and even the city of Calcutta remaining under water for the third consecutive day. With elections only six days away on October 3, the administration as well as the electoral office have taken relief measures up with a war preparedness to ensure relocation of polling booths and smooth functioning of the electoral system in the 15 districts which have been declared flood-affected and bring succor to the over 20 lakh distressed people. At least 15 people have been killed in house collapses and related disasters in the rains. The weather office, while predicting that the low depression area was moving towards Bihar, has, however, said that the wet spell might continue and that this had been the heaviest rains since 1978.

The Army as well as the Air Force have been requested to help put in the relief work in which Left Front cadres have put in their all with great sincerity. The chief minister Jyoti Basu has called an emergency meeting of all parties at which measures to tackle the emergency are to be discussed threadbare.

The state finance minister Asim Dasgupta made an aerial survey of Howrah, Hooghly, Bardhaman and Murshidabad districts even as the weather gods are believed to be frowning on North Bengal areas of Malda and Darjeeling. The rains are continuing and one death was reported as late as on Sunday from Kandi area in Murshidabad. A total of 400 houses have been swept away in Birbhum. A party worker Rabindranath Bairagya died of a heart attack caused by fatigue even while he was trying to ferry marooned people to safety in Mangalkot.

The CPI (M) state secretary, Anil Biswas, in a statement issued shortly after the deluge on Friday, has appealed to all parties to forsake politics in the face of the calamity. The CPI (M) has decided to cancel all election meetings till Monday to engage all cadres in relief work. The chief electoral officer of the state Jahar Sarkar has said that while all possibilities were being looked into regarding relocation of polling booths in submerged areas, there was no reason as of now to postpone polling on Sunday. The chief minister Jyoti Basu's meetings have been canceled till Monday evening.

Reports have been coming in from various districts about obstructions being faced by Left Front in relief work and attacks by Trinamool Congress workers who are out to disrupt peaceful relief work. All election offices of the Front have been converted into relief centres for the round-the-clock help and cadres are relentlessly moving out to all areas to bring succor to the needy.

However, the Trinamool Congress is out to make petty politics out of a tragedy and its workers are resisting relief work in Hooghly district saying that CPI (M) sympathisers were getting more largesse than others; a naked untruth. Batches of CPI (M) volunteers are on a round-the-clock vigil beside key dam installations to ensure that sudden bursts do not sweep away villages in the districts. The Trinamool attitude is best exemplified by an incident in which a party panchayat pradhan has been arrested alongwith her family members in Hooghly district while trying to ferry away food and stocks meant for relief.