Kolkata: Two months after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) breached Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal bastion, all eyes are now on how people in the state will respond to the chief minister’s Martyrs’ Day rally scheduled on Sunday.
The day, 21 July, is observed by Mamata Banerjee in remembrance of 13 Youth Congress workers who were killed in police firing in 1993. The rally, which has become the ruling Trinamool Congress’ biggest political event over the years, will show if TMC is still capable of mobilising people like they used to do in all these years.
The rally assumes immense significance this year as Mamata is likely to kick start her campaign for the crucial 2021 Assembly elections with a demand to boycott EVMs and bring back ballot boxes.
Mamata’s persistent campaign against EVMs
Mamata had blamed ‘programmed EVMs’ for her party’s electoral loss in the Lok Sabha elections. She had said the EVMs were manipulated, the VVPATs tampered and the entire vote-counting process was ‘programmed’ to give maximum number of seats to the BJP.
The chief minister had demanded a high-level probe into alleged tampering of EVMs in elections. In January this year, Banerjee had also said that the opposition will take up the issue of EVM hacking with the Election Commission of India.
She had also asked her MPs to raise the issue of EVM tampering in the Parliament. A group of MPs was even assigned to do research to find out if EVMs were tampered.
“It is our political stand that we want to bring back ballot (papers). But, as far as EVMs are concerned, we are yet to get any concrete evidence against its functioning (tampering) during elections or anything that can establish the allegations made by the opposition leaders. We are talking to the experts,” a senior TMC leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told ThePrint.
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Mamata not able to accept defeat, says Kailash Vijayvargiya
BJP’s national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya said, “She (Mamata) is not able to accept defeat. She is not there in the mind of voters anymore. It is a fact.”
A senior BJP leader, who did not wish to be named, said the parties that want to spread “terror” and “rig polls” always speak of bringing back ballot boxes. Another BJP leader, requesting anonymity, called the demand for ballot boxes ‘regressive’.
Rally will be even bigger this time, says TMC
In a situation where the TMC has almost been decimated in two important regions — north Bengal, where it lost seven of eight seats, and in Jangalmahal, where it lost all the five seats — it looks difficult to make the rally successful.
TMC general secretary Subrata Bakshi, however, said the party was not facing any “challenge”. “This time, the rally will be bigger than last year,” he said while supervising the arrangements at Esplanade, where it will be held.
This year seems to be even more interesting because this is the first time when TMC will be working under the guidance of poll strategist Prashant Kishor.
A senior TMC leader from Cooch Behar district told ThePrint that Kishor had taken a “three-hour-long session” with the district leaders and given several “tips” on how to regain the lost ground.
The 1993 protest march, led by Mamata, who was then a Youth Congress leader, was organised to demand that voter ID card be made the only required document for voting to stop, what she had called CPM’s ‘scientific rigging’.
Some of the aspects of “scientific rigging” were enrolling bogus voters, deleting anti-ruling party voters and terrorising them to ensure they don’t make it to polling booths, driving out poll agents of other parties from booths and casting bogus votes.
Interestingly, 26 years later, Mamata is demanding to bring back ballot boxes, but this time targeting the BJP – her main political opponent now.
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