By holding back list of rural poll nominees Trinamul Congress ends up fanning exactly what it wanted to prevent

Names finalised by party national secretary Abhishek Banerjee were kept under wraps till the final days, the idea was to minimise proxy candidates, kept a lid on simmering intra-party feuds

Police personnel walk past during a route march ahead of the state Panchayat poll, in Nadia.: PTI

Sougata Mukhopadhyay, TT, Calcutta, 15.06.23: The violence in Bengal in the last few days centred around the July 8 rural polls have revealed the internal fault lines within the state’s ruling dispensation which surfaced even as the Trinamul Congress pressed the accelerator for filing nominations of candidates at the eleventh hour.

But why did the Trinamul hold its horses for so long? What did it hope to achieve by not announcing its candidates?

Political observers believe that the attempt from the party’s top brass all through was to keep a lid on these clashes and disputes for as long as possible and which could precisely be the reason why the party refrained from going full throttle in announcing candidates and filing nominations during the first four days of the six-day nomination window offered by the state election commission.

Here's a slice of the events of the last 24 hours.

* Largescale violence which broke out between two factions of the ruling Trinamul Congress kept Canning in South 24 Parganas on the boil with crude bombs raining and shots being fired from both ends over filing of nominations. Supporters of the party’s local MLA Pareshram Das clashed with those of the local Trinamul block president Saibal Lahiri after the latter put up a road block at the hospital crossing in the area, alleging that candidates were prevented from filing nominations by miscreants sheltered by the MLA. At least two Trinamul workers sustained bullet injuries, police confirmed.

Law and order on the ground spiraled quickly out of control and police, despite resorting to lathi charge to disperse the clashing mob, struggled initially. Five police personnel, including local SDPO Dibakar Das, were hurt from the incessant brick batting.

* Disgruntled Trinamul workers locked the party’s office in Nandigram Block I after the party declared its candidate list from the area. The agitating workers maintained they would keep the office locked until Trinamul leader Sheikh Sufiyan’s name was deleted from the list of candidates. The day-long drama showed no signs of getting resolved and, despite local leaders holding meetings to pacify the angry workers, two more locks were added to the office's collapsible gate during the second half of the day.

* Leaders of the Trinamul minority cell in Malda, including its president and secretary, resigned en masse from the party after failing to secure tickets for panchayat seats which were declared on Wednesday. The leaders alleged that minority cell members weren’t adequately represented in the party’s candidate list and some of those who were included, did so in exchange for money. Trinamul Malda district president Abdul Rahim Bakshi, however, rubbished those claims stating the list had adequate representation from the community even though cell members may have been left out for organization purposes.

* A Trinamul candidate was roughed up and her residence ransacked, allegedly by workers of her own party in Suti, Murshidabad, immediately after the party announced its list of candidates from the region.

According to data released by the commission, till Tuesday, June 13 the Trinamul Congress filed nominations in 9,328 seats across all three tiers of state panchayat which is barely 10 per cent of the total 93,425 nominations filed across all parties till that day. The BJP tops the list with 37,565 nominations followed by the CPI-M which has managed to place 30,249 candidates so far.

TMC going slow in the first four days

Considering that 61,636 seats are up for grabs across all three tiers of rural bodies in Bengal, the Trinamul filed nominations in a little over 15 per cent seats during the first four days.

“We are very much on course as far as filing party nominations is concerned. We are implementing our party’s policy and instructions of our top brass. The bulk of nominations would be submitted during the last two days and rest assured, we will file candidates in 100 per cent panchayat seats,” said Santanu Sen, TMC MP and party’s nomination in-charge of Hooghly district.

Senior sources in the party confirmed that candidate lists were being finalized by the office of party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee and top secrecy was being maintained on the entire selection process. Banerjee has so far completed 49 days of his 60-day Naba Jowar mass outreach campaign for the party which aims at selecting candidates based on the party’s grass roots opinion expressed through secret ballot.

Leadership held back final list of candidates

Said a TMC leader, requesting anonymity: “The nominations could not be filed till now since we did not receive the candidate list from our leadership. The lists are being dispatched only now and the process must be completed within the next 36 hours we have in our hands.”

Another leader maintained that the strategy of filing nominations late was devised to minimize the number of proxy candidates joining the poll fray. Proxy candidates are bogus candidates, often filed by Opposition parties from among hopefuls who were denied poll tickets, who have little chance of winning elections on their own but could manage to eat into the vital vote bank of candidates who are likely to win seats by slender margins. “Last minute filing of nominations would mean that the opposition would have little time to push proxy candidates in the fray,” the leader explained.

But more importantly, sources within the party agreed, it’s a means to mitigate apprehensions of intra-party rebellion which could mar TMC’s campaign prospects during the run-up to the polls scheduled to take place on July 8. “Look at the feuds that have already come out in the open. Imagine the kind of embarrassment we would face if this would have started from Day 1. The Opposition would have a field day cashing in on the disappointed supporters fighting among themselves,” a party source agreed.

Disgruntled grassroots workers?

Another concern is the possibility of disgruntled grassroots workers, who constitute vital components in the party’s poll machinery, going inactive during the crucial poll run-up campaigns and on the day of polls if they feel let down by the candidates announced. “Only when the nomination window is closed, we have the option of telling our workers that they need to accept the choice of our leadership since there is no further scope of changing that list,” a leader opined.

But the question that still begs a reply is whether Abhishek Banerjee felt these overwhelming grassroots pulses during his ongoing tour of the districts. Whether the unprecedented strategy to hold its horses till the last moments was devised by the Trinamul based on the feedback that Banerjee received during his mass outreach, was a question to which no Trinamul leaders were willing to stick their neck out and confirm. Or even deny.