Parishad, a spoiler in Dooars

Siliguri, May 13,TT: The Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad has failed to make any significant impact on the results of five seats where it had contested and instead emerged a spoiler for the anti-Left alliance by helping the Left retain three constituencies in the Dooars.

The state leaders of the Parishad, who were confident of doing well in the polls, have blamed the grassroots leadership for the poor show. The tribal outfit’s popularity was based on its tooth-and-nail opposition to the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s demand that the Terai and the Dooars be included in its proposed Gorkhaland. Over the past two years, the Parishad had also made serious inroads into the tea gardens with workers moving away from Citu and Intuc to join their newly formed Progressive Tea Workers Union.

“Our intention was noble and our demands were rational, but it was the failure of the regional leadership who could not convince our supporters the importance of our agenda,” said Tez Kumar Toppo, the state general secretary of the Parishad.

But the anti-Left alliance has blamed the Parishad for severing ties with the Congress even after a round of talks with Pranab Mukherjee before the polls.

“Had they sided with us our alliance candidates would have won in Kumargram, Birpara-Madarihat and Malbazar. Even the Morcha-backed Independent candidate in Kalchini would have lost,” said Prabhat Mukherjee, a leader of Congress trade union, Intuc. The only seat won by the anti-Left despite Parishad presence is Nagrakata.

Figures underscore what Mukherjee has alleged: in Birpara-Madarihat, the RSP won by polling 42,539 votes while the combined votes for the Congress and the Parishad candidates was 48,568. In Kumargram, the RSP polled 71,545 votes and the Trinamul and Parishad votes totalled 77,748 votes. The CPM candidate benefited and polled 62,077 votes in Malbazar as the total ballots polled by the Congress and the Parishad stood at 78,577.

Wilson Chompromari, the Morcha-backed Independent in Kalchni, polled 46,000 votes while the Trinamul and the Parishad candidates together got 63,000 votes.