Does the Trinamool Congress have no fear of history repeating itself? In the panchayat election in 2018, violence on polling day left 13 people dead, and TMC won 95 per cent of around 70,000 panchayat seats. One-third of those seats were won unopposed, as no other party had been able to file nominations in the violent run-up to the polls. TMC paid the price for this in the 2019 general election, as voters gave the BJP victory in 18 out of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats.
It was revenge voting.
When TMC national general secretary and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, went on a “Naba Jowar” or new wave yatra from north to south Bengal through May to prepare for the panchayat polls, one assurance he repeated vociferously was that the 2023 panchayat election would be bloodless. TMC, it seemed, had learnt a lesson and was not going to allow a repeat of 2018, and risk a backlash in the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha election. But at least three people have been reported dead in the last six days due to violence over the filing of nominations, indicating that the history lesson seems to have been thrown to the winds.
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Bengal’s history of poll-violence
To be fair, poll violence in West Bengal is not solely a TMC-engineered phenomenon. The Left Front reign was marked by the same tradition, which political analysts have traced back to the Naxal period, particularly in the assembly election of 1972 under then-Congress chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray. In those days, states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Kerala, and Tripura also experienced bloody polling days. However, while poll violence in the other states has since disappeared or diminished, in West Bengal, that tradition is alive and kicking.
West Bengal had expected ‘parivartan’ when Mamata Banerjee unseated the Left in 2011. Much has changed in the state, without question, and for the better in many spheres. But the tradition of poll violence has not changed.
They could have changed it all. After coming to power in West Bengal, the TMC went from strength to strength, in the subsequent panchayat, municipal, and assembly elections. In 2016, despite the Saradha chit fund scam that affected millions of the poorest, and despite the even more immediate Narada sting operation that captured TV footage of top leaders accepting wads of cash from a journalist posing as a businessman, TMC won a second term with more seats than in 2011.
So, in 2018, there was no earthly reason for the TMC to capture booths in the panchayat election. But it allegedly did.
Also read: West Bengal violence shows how police act as a private army of politicians
Minority vote drifting, lesson learnt
This time around, TMC may have some reasons to worry. Much water has flown under the bridge since 2021 when Didi, on a wheelchair, spectacularly sent the BJP reeling with her slogan of ‘Khela Hobe’ (the game is on). Last year, West Bengal witnessed an unprecedented sight: a mountain of pink Rs 2000 notes in the home of a TMC minister’s alleged girlfriend. It was a shock to the system in a state that prides itself on frugality. The minister in question was the education minister and as the teachers’ recruitment scam unravelled, disgruntlement with corruption spread at the grassroots level.
Then, somewhere along the way, sections of Mamata Banerjee’s unshakeable source of electoral strength – the minority vote – seemed to grow restive.
It started with the death of Anis Khan, a 27-year-old youth who fell off the roof of his house after being escorted by some quasi-cops called civic volunteers from the local police station on the night of 18 February 2022. His father rejected the TMC’s attempts to reach out. Anis Khan was reported to be a supporter of the Indian Secular Front (ISF), the party led by Pir Abbas Siddiqui. The ISF has one MLA in the assembly from the Bhangar constituency in South 24 Parganas district.
Sagardighi was next, the assembly constituency in Murshidabad district where, in a by-election in March, the Congress candidate Bayron Biswas won the poll. He has since switched sides and joined the TMC. But Sagardighi was a shock to Trinamool and the first electoral signal that sections of the minority vote may be drifting.
Perhaps predictably, some of the worst nomination-filing-related violence was seen in the last week at Bhangar, the Muslim-dominated stronghold of ISF MLA Nawshad Siddiqui. There has also been violence in Murshidabad district and North Dinajpur, where there is a large minority presence. This may also explain why north Bengal has been relatively quiet in the run-up to the polls. North Bengal is where the BJP gets most of its support in the state, and the minority population is thin.
But there is a twist in the narrative of pre-poll violence that suggests deep thinking by the Trinamool, having been bitten by the violence of 2018. That year, 34 per cent of the seats were uncontested. This time, by all accounts, the opposition parties have been able to file nominations in much larger numbers.
The final tally is still awaited. However, as of 1:30 pm Friday, the State Election Commission reported that a total of 2,36,464 nominations had been filed. TMC filed 85,817 nominations, BJP 56,321, CPM 48,646, Congress 17,750, and others, the rest.
So, TMC may have learnt a lesson from history after all, and has at least avoided the embarrassment of winning seats uncontested. Now all eyes are on what happens on polling and counting day. In the meantime, the court has ordered central forces to be deployed in every district of West Bengal on 8 July. Mamata Banerjee has responded to that, saying at a rally on 16 June that central forces were also deployed in 2021, but the outcome was there for all to see.
Trinamool Congress would want history to repeat itself – not 2019, but certainly 2021. But does history allow you to choose if you haven’t learnt from it?
The author is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)