GHATAL: Ghatal’s annual tryst with floods is a hot-button issue that crops up every elections and is put on the back burner after voting. The
Ghatal Master Plan
was proposed way back in 1959 to bring relief to people living in the lowlying areas in and around the Ghatal sub-division of West Bengal. It took Planning Commission 20 years to okay the plan and its foundation was finally laid in 1982 — the year
Trinamool Congress
’s Ghatal candidate Dev was born and his BJP opponent, former Tollywood co-star
Hiraan
, was all of six.
Today, Dev is 41, Hiraan 47, and the proposed master plan, a sepiatinged 65. The lack of its implementation continues to dominate the poll discourse this year too.
Considered among the country’s most flood-prone zones, the Ghatal sub-division is located 120km from Kolkata. It lies in the catchment area of the rain-fed Shilabati and Jhumi rivers at the base of the Chhota Nagpur plateau. Boats and canoes replace vehicles as flood waters inundate farmlands, roads and homes, destroying standing crops and displacing people.
In 1982, Rs 50 crore was allocated to the plan after it was sanctioned. Today, it is a Rs 1,250-crore project that promises to benefit 17 lakh people across 12 blocks in West and East Midnapore districts by making the rivers navigable, clearing canals and ponds, setting up drainage facilities and pumping stations and building barrages, dams and bridges.
According to the earlier plan, Centre was to bear 60% of its cost, and the state govt the rest.
Unable to get the project on track, Dev had given up hope and even contemplated quitting politics. But in Feb 2023, CM Mamata Banerjee and party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee stepped in, announcing that if Centre does not fund the project, the state will fund it entirely. A survey will be conducted, and the first tranche of funds will be released before yearend, the CM promised.
Hiraan, a PhD in rural development and a post-doctoral researcher at IIT Kharagpur, has not lost sight of the issue. While he has repeatedly stressed that Centre will fund this project, he questions the intent of Dev and the Mamata govt behind raking up the issue only during polls and not after.
Dev has been Ghatal’s MP since 2014. It is also a fact that Bengal has been pressing the issue with Centre, but in vain. In his first speech as a Lok Sabha MP in Aug 2016, and his last in Feb 2024, he urged Centre to help mitigate Ghatal’s recurring flood crisis. Ghatal Master Plan figures in every election speech he has made since his nomination was announced by Trinamool on March 10.
The battle for Ghatal has also led to an intense off-screen rivalry between Dev and Hiraan, who is also the sitting BJP MLA from Kharagpur.
Hiraan’s relentless personal attacks on Dev, an actor with a huge fan following in Bengal, has been an electoral campaign fixture.
If Keshpur, where Dev’s extended family lives, votes as it did in 2019, it will be an easy victory for him. Of his 1 lakh-plus victory margin on Ghatal LS seat, Keshpur assembly segment alone gave him a 92,000-vote lead. However, in the 2021 assembly elections, Trinamool’s Siuli Saha could win by a margin of only 20,000 votes.
Keshpur grabbed headlines in 1998 following violent clashes between CPM and Trinamool Congress over control of the area, marking the first time Trinamool made inroads into the once-impregnable red bastion of CPM.
However, since 2019, BJP has made significant inroads into Ghatal. In the 2021 assembly elections, BJP won the Ghatal seat. The saffron party secured a 41% vote share in the 2019 Lok Sabha contest in Ghatal against Trinamool’s 48%.
