Victory Of Violence, Victory Nevertheless

The TMC continues to rule Bengal, with the Left Front showing signs of recovery only in the north. The BJP’s lack of organisation makes it hopeless in the states. 

In an election marred by events of widespread violence all over the state, the ruling Trinamool Congress led by their supremo and Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, has emerged victorious. Out of the 92 civic boards all over the state, the ruling party has got a majority in 70, including a victory in Kolkata, while the Left Front and the Congress have got the mandate in six and five municipalities respectively. An interesting fact remains that 11 municipalities have returned hung verdicts and they are now open to post-election realignment. Overall, the TMC continues to enjoy dominance in south Bengal, while in places like Siliguri and Dinhata in the north, the Left has managed to secure power. The Congress continues to be irrelevant in the state except in specific pockets.

Of the 144 wards in the all-important Kolkata Municipal Corporation, 114 have been won by the ruling TMC while the Left’s tally has come down from 33 in 2010 to 15. Despite the increase in its tally, however, there have been certain incidents of embarrassment for the ruling party.

Heavyweights like the chairman of the outgoing board, Sachchidananda Banerjee and Deputy Mayor Farzana Alam have lost to the BJP and CPI(M) candidates respectively. On the other hand, although their number of councillors in the KMC has gone up to 7, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s comparatively high vote percentage in the parliamentary election last year has come down considerably. The BJP’s poor show can be primarily put down to bitter factionalism and alleged mismanagement in the state BJP. With victories in only 5 wards of the city, the Congress has failed to make a mark in the city.

Polling in the ‘valley of fear’

The election for the KMC was conducted on 18 April and those for the 91 district municipalities the next Saturday. The trends that started coming in from the morning of 28 April were early confirmation of what was already obvious from the opinion polls conducted about a month ahead of the polls. By the end of the day, the picture was fully clear. The TMC’s victory was complete. Conducted by AC Nielsen and other research groups, the opinion polls had already indicated a majority for the Trinamool Congress in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and in most other places. What the pollsters could not and did not predict was the spate of unabashed violence and massive rigging that was perpetrated by the ruling party on both the polling days. Widespread attacks carried out by the TMC cadre as well as hired outsiders at various booths were witnessed from the morning of the 18^th and was also covered by the electronic media.

There were instances of booth capturing, booth jamming, false voting and other malpractices galore. Opposition candidates and their agents were threatened and manhandled. In certain cases, the number of votes polled in a particular booth has actually exceeded the number of actual voters registered for that booth! By and large, the police and election officials remained mute spectators as even the media was not spared with reporters being assaulted and cameras smashed. One ACP of the Kolkata Police was captured on camera assaulting a TV journalist when the issue of an EVM being smashed was brought to his notice. Images of all this, including the party cadre and outsiders tampering with the EVM’s inside the booths, were shown throughout the day on various local news channels.

Earlier, the Centre had denied the request for additional troops during the civic polls. The events that occurred during the day proved beyond reasonable doubt that central troops could have done a much better job in ensuring free and fair elections. At places, even the police was not spared. At about 4:30 pm, a sub-inspector of Kolkata Police, Jagannath Mandal, got shot by a miscreant in an alleged crossfire between goons of the ruling Trinamool and the Congress in the Girish Park area of central Calcutta. Though initially critical, the police officer’s condition is currently stable.

Such was the magnitude of the rigging and violence that even controversial State Election Commissioner Susanta Ranjan Upadhyay, the first non-IAS officer to be appointed to the post who drew flak from both the state opposition and the media, initially stated that the elections were “not held in an ideal atmosphere”. Almost immediately contradicted by the Chief Minister who certified the polls as “peaceful as never witnessed before”, Upadhyay went back on his statement the very next day, saying that there was no complaint regarding any “major instance of violence” with his office!

The district municipalities went to the polls on 25 April with an extremely bad taste in the mouth. There were apprehensions that the incidence of violence experienced in the metropolis would be manifold in the semi-urban and more interior areas where both administrative and media presence would be considerably much less. These apprehensions were not unfounded. Even as the capital city was still reeling under the aftermath violence, a major section of the rest of Bengal experienced similar mayhem. In places like Katwa in Burdwan district, there were several events of violence and instances of gunfire that actually resulted in the death of a youth. Incidentally, Katwa is one of the 11 municipalities to have ultimately shown a hung result. There were other instances of violence and trouble fomenting at places like Dum Dum, Titagarh, Basirhat and Sonamukhi in Bankura, among others.

The State Election Commission has denied the occurrence of any major wrongdoing and rejected demands for re-election in any of the booths polled.

Left comeback in the north?

Bucking the overall trend of its diminishing prospects, the Left Front has made a comeback of sorts in the northern areas of the state. Led by veteran CPI(M) leader and ex-minister Ashok Bhattacharya in what was a ‘prestige fight’, they have managed to wrest the Siliguri municipality back from the ruling TMC by winning 23 of the wards. Similarly, the Dinhata municipality was swept by the Left under the leadership of Udayan Guha of the Forward Bloc. Many experts have attributed these victories to the anti-TMC votes consolidating under the banner of the Left.

As of the result day, there are as many as 11 hung municipalities all over Bengal, some of which are Kharagpur, Katwa, Dhuliyan and Jaynagar. In many of these, it is expected that the Congress and CPI(M)-led Left might join hands to form the governing municipal board. This becomes more plausible now with the ascension of Sitaram Yechury to the post of general secretary of the CPI(M) party politburo.

Many in the political and journalistic circles who observe West Bengal keenly had dubbed the civic polls of 2015 the ‘semi-final’ to the Assembly elections in 2016. In the present scenario, especially given the circumstances the polls were held in, it will be difficult to draw a definite conclusion. With the Congress now irrelevant in the state and the Left vote share dwindling continuously, the BJP had been trying to establish itself as the principal opponent party and challenger to Mamata’s TMC. While the ‘Modi factor’ worked in its favour in the parliamentary elections a year ago, it is now very clear that it lacks immensely in terms of proper organisational structure in the state. With the Left succeeding at least partially in trying to make a comeback, the fight for the Bengal assembly in 2016 will be interesting. Being a crucial state both geographically and historically, it is paramount to the nation’s interest to have a stable and properly functioning government in Bengal.