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Dasmunsi has a tough task in West Bengal

Special Correspondent

Priyaranjan Dasmunsi

KOLKATA: Perhaps one of the biggest challenges that Priyaranjan Dasmunsi, newly-appointed president of the West Bengal Congress unit, will be facing is factionalism.

The panchayat elections in the State are scheduled for May and Mr. Dasmunsi has his work cut out.

What sort of a bearing his appointment will have on the relations between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress, given the fact that Mr. Dasmunsi has been a strong advocate of closer ties with the Trinamool in the fight against the ruling Left Front in the elections to come, is another question that awaits an answer.

The State Congress unit has, over the past years, been fraught with dissension and conflicting loyalties, with one faction claiming the patronage of its former president, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, and the other that of Mr. Dasmunsi.

The divisions within the leadership sharpened following Mr. Mukherjee’s decision to relinquish the post of president of the State unit shortly after the 2006 Assembly elections.

Since then the party has been without a chief, being left with only a “working president” in Pradip Bhattacharjee to oversee the affairs — a move that has only exacerbated the strained relations between the two factions.

“Factionalism has been there in the party for long but we can only hope that it will not affect our electoral prospects,” Mr. Bhattacharjee told The Hindu.

“But our support to Mr. Dasmunsi will be unconditional and we will do all to serve the interests of our party and honour the decision of Sonia Gandhi,” Mr. Bhattacharjee — never considered one among the group loyal to the newly appointed president — said.

The most outspoken of those close to Mr. Dasmunsi is senior MLA Subrata Mukherjee, who described the former “as the person most fit for the president’s post; one who can get along with all.” “The biggest challenge before him will be to close the gap between the different factions within the party and face the panchayat polls united,” he added.

Mr. Mukherjee has been urging for closer ties with the Trinamool Congress even though the latter’s chief, Mamata Banerjee, on Tuesday ruled out forging any electoral alliance with the Congress.

The Congress leadership, on its part, has been insisting that she dissociate herself from the National Democratic Alliance and join it in forming a “secular” front.

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