CALCUTTA, 22 April 2004 — Several close contests are on the cards in Left Front-ruled West Bengal which will elect 42 MPs on May 10 in the last phase of polling.

Ajit Panja, sitting Trinamul Congress MP in Calcutta (North-East), is fighting a do-or-die battle against Mohammed Selim of the CPI(M). Panja’s shifting political loyalties have become his bane.

The veteran MP parted ways with TC supremo Mamta Banerjee, almost joined the Congress before he came back to his senses. Selim, on the other hand, comes across as a disciplined and mature alternative to the old warhorse.

Similarly, it is difficullt to predict who will win the Calcutta (North-West) seat. The official TC candidate, Subrato Mukherjee, is pitted against sitting TC MP, Sudip Bandopadhyay, who was not renominated because of his BJP links.

A division in TC votes might just catapult the CPI(M)’s Sudanghshu Seal to Parliament in his very first Lok Sabha contest.

But in Asansol, the CPI(M)’s sitting MP, Bikash Chowdhury, might lose to TC challenger Moloy Ghatak. As Coal Minister, Banerjee, has announced a package to win over voters in the industrial belt and Ghatak stands to benefit from it.

In the Tamluk seat, sitting CPI(M) MP, Lakshman Seth, has belatedly pulled out all stops to keep TC challenger Sudhangshu Adhikary at bay. Adhikary is snapping at Mr Seth’s heels, according to latest reports.

The Dum Dum seat too could prove to be a close call this time. Sitting BJP MP, Tapen Sikdar, has won twice but CPI(M)’s Amitava Nandy could spoil Sikdar’s hit trick prospects.

The CPI(M) is determined to bag Dum Dum at any cost. It has united its two major factions which are now working in tandem to wrest the seat from the BJP. The red party is even wooing Dum Dum’s Marwaris and Gujaratis to seal Sikdar’s fate in the key seat on the city’s outskirts which was considered a Marxist fortress until the BJP unexpectedly bagged it in 1998. In Behrampore, Marxists have unleashed the police on the sitting Congress MP, Adhir Chowdhury. His relatives have been picked up and Chowdhury himself faces arrest. The crackdown has brightened Left Front constituent, Revolutionary Socialist Party’s Pramatesh Mukherjee’s prospects.

And in adjoining Jangipur, Congress Party’s Pranab Mukherjee, who is fighting a Lok Sabha election for the first time in his distinguished political career, is tipped to defeat his challenger, sitting CPI(M) MP, Abul Hasnat Khan, by a slim margin.

Congress Party contestant Priyaranjan Dasmunshi is on a sticky wicket in Raigunj. Frequent bouts of absence from the constituency have earned him the label of ‘non-resident’ MP. Although he won by a margin of 75,000 votes in 1999, this time Dasmunshi is locked in a neck-and-neck race with CPI(M)’s Minoti Ghosh. In Coochbehar, rebel Forward Bloc candidate who happens to be the sitting MP — Amar Roy Pradhan — is giving sleepless nights to the FB’s official candidate, Hiten Burman, in a triangular contest.