The ruling CPI(M) and the Opposition Trinamul Congress which are desperately wooing Muslim voters are likely to field a record number of Muslim candidates in the coming Assembly elections. In the past few months, both camps have taken a number of measures to win the hearts of the Muslims who constitute nearly 27 per cent of the total population in the state.
The sops railway minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has offered to the Muslims include concession passes for madrasa students for train journeys and permission to write railway recruitment examination in Urdu. After suffering unprecedented drubbing in the last Lok Sabh polls.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government has also been showering its largesse on the Muslims of the state. From giving 250 acre land free of cost for a campus of Aligarh Muslim University in Murshidabad to providing reservation to the Muslims in government jobs, Mr Bhattacharjee has gone all out to win back the support of the Muslim voters whose alienation from the CPI(M) was one of the main reasons for the Left Front’s humiliating defeat in the parliamentary polls.
In the last Assembly polls, the CPI(M) had fielded 34 Muslim candidates and the Trinamul Congress 40. It was, however, the Congress which had fielded the maximum number of Muslim candidates: 54. CPI(M) central committee member Mohammad Salim said that the CPI(M) and the Left Front had always given adequate representation to Muslims. “While the representation of Muslims in panchayat, civic bodies and Assemblies have steadily declined in other states, in Bengal it has significantly gone up,” he claimed.