Kolkata: Grassroots connections and image cleanup — this is what the Trinamool Congress (TMC) is seemingly attempting to achieve with its latest decision to seek public opinion in selection of candidates for the upcoming panchayat elections in West Bengal.
Days after losing its national party status, the Mamata Banerjee-led ruling TMC has announced that it will hold a secret ballot to select candidates for the panchayat polls scheduled later this year. The exercise will be led by Mamata’s nephew and party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.
“I had told Abhishek not to conduct this programme, he would fall sick in this weather,” Banerjee said while announcing the decision at the state secretariat Wednesday. “The workers would also face hardships. But they have decided to connect with the people, they will begin their people’s connect from 25 April and continue it for the next two months.”
Coming under the TMC’s ‘Gram Banglar Motamot’, or opinion of rural Bengal, the statewide exercise will culminate with the selection of candidates who will finally contest the elections.
On his part, Abhishek said this was the first time such an exercise was being held in India.
“Across India, when it comes to deciding candidates for elections, decisions are taken behind closed doors through centralisation of power and are based on the recommendations of district and block leadership,” he said. “For the first time in India, we’ve set out to take the opinion of the people on candidates for gram panchayats to ensure, in the truest sense, a people’s panchayat.”
The exercise comes at a crucial time for the TMC — not only did the Election Commission of India withdraw its national party status on 11 April, but the party is also fighting a series of graft allegations, such as the alleged irregularities in the recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff in the state’s government and aided schools.
Political analysts in the state see this as an attempt to gain lost ground, especially before the 2024 general elections. It’s also being looked at as a move to help Abhishek cement his position as the party’s unmistakable second-in-command.
“With this programme, the TMC is trying to change the discourse around corruption that has hurt the party’s image, especially considering the TMC had promised zero-tolerance towards corruption but hasn’t been able to act,” Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, political analyst and author of Mission Bengal: A Saffron Experiment, told ThePrint. “The second is to ensure Abhishek Banerjee’s grip tightens over the party’s grassroots and ticket distribution. Other senior leaders of TMC will have less say in this process.”
He added that this would also be a dress rehearsal for 2024.
But rivals don’t see much coming out of the exercise. “Only those who can use force and have a stockpile of crude bombs will be given panchayat tickets to loot the state further for the next five years. The entire party is drowned in corruption,” BJP spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya told reporters at a news conference in Kolkata Thursday. He was asked what he thought of the TMC’s move.
Like their BJP counterparts, leaders from the rival Communist Party of India (Marxist) also dismissed the exercise.
“This will be nothing but a waste of public money by the TMC,” CPM leader Sujan Chakraborty told ThePrint. “I challenge the TMC — this will yield nothing for a party that can’t shed its corruption tag.”
The exercise
According to data from the West Bengal state election commission, the TMC won 16,814 of the 48,650 seats it contested in the 2018 panchayat elections and secured another 3,059 of the 9,217 uncontested ones.
The party also won 203 of the 825 zilla parishad seats.
The finer details of TMC’s public opinion process for this election is still unclear. However, speaking at the state secretariat Wednesday, Mamata said the TMC’s two-month long exercise will begin at north Bengal’s Dinhata, known to be a BJP stronghold. For this, Abhishek will travel to Cooch Behar on 24 April.
The exercise will be conducted at the village level, where party members, neutral influencers, and public stakeholders from each gram panchayat, will vote, Mamata said.
“There are over 60,000 rural booths across the state. People will decide who will be their candidates in these booths. If somebody is unable to attend the proceedings or public meeting due to the prevailing weather conditions, they can submit their suggestions on this online platform,” she said at the meeting.
Despite rivals’ dismissal of the exercise, some analysts see it as a “bold move”, especially in the light of BJP’s growing influence in the state. “It’s an extremely bold move for the TMC to hold primaries to select candidates for three-tiered rural poll. It’s time consuming given the party would also campaign extensively to garner support,” Kolkata-based Udayan Bandopadhyay told ThePrint. “I’m keen to see the process in which the party will pick so many candidates.”
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)