Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, February 9, 2007
For the students of Presidency College, it is déjà vu. After around five years, the college has again become a stage where the lead players are the progeny of the state’s top-notch Left leaders.
In 2002, the protagonists were Suchetana and Ajanta, daughters of chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and deceased party state secretary Anil Biswas respectively, who spearheaded SFI’s election campaigns and established the Left students’ union to victory at Presidency College for the first time.
This year, when the college goes to the polls on February 27, the SFI’s strength would be bolstered with the presence of Hiya Mukherjee and Saptarshi Deb, both active SFI members, playing significant roles. First-year students of physics honours and political science respectively, the former is the daughter of tourism minister Manab Mukherjee and the latter the son of housing minister Gautam Deb. What, however, remains to be seen, is whether history would repeat itself on February 27.
In the earlier occasion, while Suchetana was an avid SFI supporter, it was Ajanta who played the more active and important role. Although SFI continues to maintain that their organisational effort brought forth the victory for two consecutive years in 2002 and 2003, the fact remains that the SFI lost after Suchetana and Ajanta left.
SFI leaders at Presidency College feel they will win the election purely on merit, not with the appeal brought by the political backgrounds of Hiya and Saptarshi. “We will definitely win the elections this year, but it would not be because we have the children of two cabinet ministers in our ranks. Our ideology and performance is strong enough to make us sail through. Both of them are just like other first-year students and campaigning for the election because they are SFI members,” said college SFI unit secretary Dipendu Mukherjee.
SFI state president Sudip Sengupta agreed that it would be wrong to suggest that a Leftist students’ body would win elections riding on the shoulders of senior leaders’ children. “None of them has utilised their fathers’ names during campaigns. Earlier, while Suchetana was never actively involved and Ajanta emerged the leader, none of them had ever used their lineage. It would be wrong if extra importance is given to such students since everyone works for the organisation in the same spirit,” he said.
Saptarshi, however, has already grabbed the attention of the SFI state leadership because of his leadership qualities and popularity among students. “He has all the makings of a leader. We see a future leader in him,” Sengupta said. He pointed out that Saptarshi’s involvement went beyond being a senior Left Front leader’s son. A few days back, he met with an accident while putting up posters inside the college premises and ended up with a fractured leg and a broken jaw. “It just happened that I became an SFI member and for the time being I want to follow the instructions of my seniors,” he said.
Similarly, Hiya is busy running campaigns centred on Singur among her classmates. “We have received briefings from seniors and are acting accordingly. The real picture of land acquisition needs to be brought forth and we have already started working on it,” she says. Although Hiya said that she had no political dream, she is aware about what her union expects from her. Ask her if there is one thing that she would like to change about her college, and pat comes the reply: “Control of the students’ union.”
The reigning students’ body, Independent Consolidation, though confident about being reinstated, feels that the involvement of VIP children does make a difference. “We have had children of several senior leaders from various parties and they do manage to create a stir. We, however, know that talking about real issues will counter this effect. We have already started campaigning about the land acquisition issue and the SFI would have to fight us on this ground,” said IC general secretary Sayantan Saha Roy.
mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com
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