LF govt tries to woo back Matua voters

Sep 22, 2010 - Age Correspondent |

Kolkata

In an apparent bid to woo the Matuas, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Tuesday conferred the Sri Sri Thakur Harichand-Guruchand award on Kapil Krishna Thakur and announced several sops for the community’s welfare. Mr Thakur is the sanghadhipati of the Matua Mahasabha.

The Matuas whose population is above a crore, is a Scheduled Caste community which has sizeable presence in 74 Assembly seats but is mainly concentrated in North 24 Parganas.
They were traditionally Left voters but in the last Lok Sabha polls, they voted for the Trinamul Congress following Mamata Banerjee’s persistent overtures.
Clearly with an eye on the Assembly polls, the Left Front government on Tuesday went all out to win back their support. To CPI(M)’s relief although following Ms Banerjee’s request, Binapani Debi Thakurani, the highly revered nonagenarian matriarch of the Matua Mahasabha, stayed away from the programme, she sent her message of goodwill to the chief minister. And her elder son Mr Thakur received the award. An evidently pleased Mr Bhattacharjee immediately accepted Mr Thakur’s request to name an educational institution after Sri Sri Guruchand-Harichand, the founders of the community.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/34021" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-e83a37e1cff04857911f53dd470f9a50" value="form-e83a37e1cff04857911f53dd470f9a50" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="88932095" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>