Twenty people were reportedly killed in violent clashes related to Panchayat elections in West Bengal until Monday. The official figures are not available yet. The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) has lost more workers to the violence than the Opposition parties, claimed the senior party leaders. However, the election trajectory of West Bengal does not change.
For the first time in decades, the state witnessed re-polling in 696 booths for the rural areas, which is unique. Video clips and images of party workers running away with ballot boxes, rigging booths in presence of presiding officers, beating each other and police personnel, firing bullets, hurling bombs, arson, ransacking police cars and pelting stones – were doing the rounds on social media.
As the day progresses today, the results will keep coming from over 3,317 panchayats across districts. According to political observers, the Panchayat polls, the violence and the results are going to be reflected in the strategies of all political parties, meant for the general elections next year.
West Bengal is a crucial state for BJP as it added 18 Lok Sabha seats to its tally in 2019. Since the assembly elections in 2011, Trinamool Congress swept all elections in the state. However, the political equations and the scene changed post-Panchayat elections in 2018. The panchayat polls in 2023 may bring a similar opportunity for the BJP.
Without investing much on the ground, BJP got 18 seats as the voters cast their votes against Mamata Banerjee spontaneously. The reason, as analysed by the political experts, was unabated violence and intimidation.
The state witnessed TMC’s win in over 20,000 uncontested seats and similar scenes of clashes and killings in 2018. For the Opposition block, especially for the BJP, this election turns out to be a repetition of the 2018 Panchayat polls in terms of political violence. BJP, which has been designing its campaign on the issues of corruption, scams and the dynasty politics, will now focus on the state’s past and present scenarios of political violence.
Apart from incidents of clashes, the role of police and administration is also a glaring example of misgovernance. In recent times, no other state saw violence of this magnitude. Despite an intervention by the Calcutta High Court leading to deployment of central forces across districts, the government failed to make the polling day peaceful.
Following the incidents of a bloody poll, a section of intellectuals says that people who condemn Bengal’s current poll violence did not experience the ones during the Left regime. Also, a section of senior politicians come up with explanations – “some sporadic incidents of violence reported only in 43 of 61,000 booths, however, media highlighted only those to show the state in bad light”.
Violence over Corruption
Bengal’s electorate has a history of reacting and responding to violence through ballots. Scams and corruption may have a partial role to bring resentment among voters, but this never gets reflected through the election results. For instance, Mamata Banerjee swept the assembly elections in 2016, and panchayat polls in 2018 following the Ponzi scam – the poor depositors lost their hard earned money. Several ministers and MPs of Trinamool Congress were arrested, but voters still reposed faith in Mamata Banerjee.
The Left government’s high-handedness, arrogance, and unprecedented violence during Singur and Nandigram land agitation movement drew an end to its three-decade-long regime. Even though Mamata Banerjee saw a landslide victory in the 2021 elections, the results of 2019 still haunt the ruling party.
After the nomination process, the BJP’s poll strategy is now revolving around the incidents of political violence, while the cadres are being trained to retaliate to such violence. A close look at BJP’s election strategy and campaign reveals how the party has brought Bengal’s political violence to the centre of national politics. The issue has been made prominent and crucial. The BJP has taken the fight to the court, which brought some scathing observations, and it managed to create a political narrative against Mamata Banerjee’s government in a certain way.
The violence has taken centre-stage, and has also prompted senior Congress leaders, including Mallikarjun Kharge, to condemn it. This does not serve Mamata Banerjee’s purpose of building a national image of good and liberal governance.