Badal Bhattacharya. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Calcutta, Sept. 16: Samik Bhattacharya may want to take a few Assembly survival tips from Badal Bhattacharya before entering its hallowed chambers.

Their surnames are not the only similarity, their situation in the Assembly is comparable too. Samik, who has just won the Basirhat South seat, will be the lone BJP MLA in the House. Badal was the BJP’s debutant in the Assembly, winning the bypoll in North 24-Parganas’ Ashoknagar in 1999, when the party was in an alliance with Trinamul.

Badal, who is 67 and has retired from active politics because of ill health, today recounted his “humiliation” in the Assembly, alleging that he was called Hanuman by Jyoti Basu.

Hashim Abdul Halim, the then Speaker, said Basu never used “meaningless words”.

Badal, who remained an MLA till 2001, said: “I used to be ridiculed by members of the Treasury benches. I felt humiliated when Basu sometimes called me Hanuman and a Bajrang Dal representative. I was not even allowed much time to speak in the House,” he recounted.

Badal said he had lodged several verbal and written complaints with Halim, but there was no end to “my ordeal”.

Asked why he had been subjected to ridicule in the House, the former BJP MLA said: “It could have been the after-effect of the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition. Besides, the Treasury benches took advantage of my being the lone representative of the BJP.”

Halim said he could not recollect what happened 15 years ago. “But this much I can tell you — other members might have ridiculed him (Badal), but Jyoti Basu did not use meaningless words,” he said.

Former CPM MLA Rabin Mondal, who was then the government chief whip, said his party colleagues “almost regularly ridiculed Badalbabu and I had to intervene to restrain them”.

Asked if Basu used to refer to Badal as Hanuman, Mondal said: “I cannot recall that. But he (Basu) used to call him a Bajrang Dal representative quite often while participating in debates.”

Sobhandeb Chattapadhyay, the then Trinamul MLA from Baruipur, said he had stood up on numerous occasions to protest “CPM legislators’ humiliation of Badalbabu”.

“Trinamul was then the BJP’s ally and it was my duty to protest the humiliation being meted out to Badalbabu,” he said tonight.

Badal had won the Ashoknagar bypoll by a margin of 9,498 votes, defeating the CPM’s Rekha Goswami.

Badal today hoped that Samik would not face ridicule. “The equations have changed. The BJP is in power at the Centre. I hope Samik won’t be treated like me in the House,” he said.

Going by what a Trinamul MLA said tonight, it seems Samik would not have a smooth sailing. “We will protest when he enters the House as his party is using the CBI against us,” the Trinamul MLA said.

Cong charge

Santosh Pathak, the Congress candidate who came third in Chowringhee, today accused veteran leader Somen Mitra and his wife Sikha of “sabotage”.

Somen denied the allegation.