Panchayat polls in Bengal: A tale of bullets, blood and ballots

Over 5.67 crore voters in West Bengal are expected to exercise their franchise in panchayat elections today.

The polling for the panchayat elections is being held across West Bengal on Saturday. But the candidate of the ruling Trinamool Congress for a panchayat samiti seat in Howrah adjoining Kolkata looks rather relaxed. “There is no other candidate against me, so I am going to be elected unopposed,” he says, confidently adding that his party colleagues contesting for the zila parishad seats will also defeat the candidates fielded by other parties. “People will vote for us as the state has seen unprecedented development under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee in the last 12 years.”

He is not alone, many of the Trinamool Congress’s candidates across the state are set to get elected uncontested. The ruling party claims that its soaring popularity has diminished the other parties – be it the BJP or the CPI(M) or the Congress – to such an extent that they could not even find candidates to field.

Also Read | Amid violence, all set for panchayat polls in West Bengal on July 8

The opposition parties have a different story to tell. “Many of our candidates couldn’t file nominations due to intimidation by the TMC’s workers,” says a BJP leader in Birbhum. “Some of the candidates were forced to withdraw nomination”. He says that 70% of the party’s candidates could remain in the fray and they are seeking votes to fight the “cut-money-raj” – a catchphrase used by the opposition parties in West Bengal to slam the ruling TMC for alleged corruption.

Also Read | Panchayat Polls in West Bengal: Tradition of political violence continues

The run-up to the panchayat polls was marred by violence. Not only the opposition parties, but Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party also lost several of its leaders and workers in the clashes. The West Bengal State Election Commission (WBSEC) claims it has received reports from the police about five deaths in political violence after it announced the panchayat polls on June 8. The media reports however pegged the death toll so far at 18. More than 500 others were injured. The Supreme Court dismissed the pleas of the state government and the WBSEC to uphold the Calcutta High Court’s order for the deployment of central forces during the elections.

Much to the TMC’s ire, the state’s Governor C V Ananda Bose visited some of the scenes of violence and met the families of the victims, before publicly criticising the State Election Commissioner Rajiva Sinha for his “failure in discharging his duties”.

Though the Trinamool Congress spectacularly stalled the BJP’s juggernaut with a landslide victory in the assembly elections in May 2021, a series of probes by the central agencies against its leaders in cases of alleged corruption put it in a tight spot over the past months. The party’s general secretary Abhishek Banerjee had a two-month-long outreach programme ahead of the panchayat polls, ostensibly to check the erosion of its support base in the villages. It slammed the BJP-led Union Government for freezing funds meant for the 100-day rural job scheme in the state as well as for not releasing the GST dues of the state. The BJP on the other hand sought votes with the promise of “chor-mukt” (corruption-free) panchayats in the state.