Intense focus on Bengal panchayat poll violence swept two things under the carpet

The overdose of West Bengal panchayat poll violence reportage on local and national TV news has an element of orchestration behind it. And it suits the BJP and TMC.

Monideepa Banerjie

TMC supporters celebrate their party candidates' victory in the West Bengal panchayat election, at a counting centre in North 24 Parganas, Tuesday | ANI

MONIDEEPA BANERJIE, 14 July, 2023 : Picture yourself at a panchayat poll counting centre. The counting is over. Candidate CPM wins by a margin of four votes. Candidate TMC runs in, grabs a bunch of ballot papers stamped in favour of the CPM, tears some in half and throws them into the air and gobbles up the rest. Yes, chews the torn sheets to pulp and then swallows. Candidate CPM watches aghast. The feast means Candidate TMC now races past Candidate CPM and wins by a margin of 44 votes.

This happens in West Bengal where the panchayat poll has just concluded. Sadly, there are no photos or videos of this ballot paper banquet as cameras aren’t allowed inside the counting centres and TMC’s denial that such an incident had occurred is matched by the CPM’s insistence that it did. The election has since been countermanded. A bypoll will be held some time in the future.

But the imagined incident will forever stay alive in my mind.

I have chosen a comical picture in one booth to remember this election by. What has happened in large swathes of the state is anything but. Over 45 people have been killed in 35 days of violence since 9 June when the poll was declared. Yes, there used to be poll violence when the Left Front was in power. Yes, sometimes the death count was higher. But do we have to continue to live that legacy? The answer can only be no.

Political parties in Bengal need to exercise missing political will and stop the violence. It is the only thing that will work. Some other formula has to be found for electoral victory. Bengal deserves it.

Not good for BJP

However, the overdose of panchayat poll violence reportage on local and national TV news over the past few days, extended by the BJP’s fact-finding team to Bengal, has an element of orchestration behind it, all to bury some unpalatable truths emerging from the results, especially in the context of the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

Unpalatable for the BJP, for starters. Just as the results of Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh assembly elections did, the Bengal panchayat poll results clearly signal the BJP’s star may no longer be on the ascendent.

The Trinamool Congress has swept the poll, all zilla parishads, 92 per cent panchayat samitis, and 80 per cent gram panchayats. Except in home turf Nandigram and East Midnapore district, BJP leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari has little to show. In north Bengal and the tribal Junglemahal, where BJP had reaped a significant crop of 18 MPs in 2019, the party has lost ground.

In 2021, BJP won 77 seats in the Bengal assembly, a fraction of Amit Shah’s target of 200 but not an insubstantial number, and it held the potential for a BJP expansion in the state. But the panchayat poll result shows it failed to do so and, in 2024, it is unlikely to be able to hold on to its existing tally of 18 MPs.  From 40% in 2019, BJP’s vote share slipped to 37% in 2021, which has further plunged to around 23% now.

Shah told Bengal BJP recently he wanted 35 out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2024. It was not mere bluster. BJP will need every MP it can get in Bengal to offset possible losses in Himachal and Karnataka that have slipped from its grasp. Who knows what Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan hold. Gains in Bengal were crucial to its 2024 calculations but, however flawed the rural poll results, as of today, BJP’s future in Bengal looks bleak.

All this got swept under the carpet with the focus on violence.

Same goes for TMC

Also swept out of sight were challenges for Mamata Banerjee emerging from the panchayat poll results.

In the polls, the Congress fought against TMC in alliance with the CPM. Bengal leader Adhir Chowdhury is one of Banerjee’s worst critics. In the past, Rahul Gandhi has backed Chowdhury against Banerjee who, in turn, gave the former Congress president no time of day. For 2024, all that needs to change.

Mamata Banerjee needs to tread carefully but quickly, as the second round of opposition unity talks in Bangalore on July 17-18 are upon her.

Much against her preferred strategy of a one-on one fight between regionally strong parties and the BJP in 2024, Mamata Banerjee will have to give Congress some seats to fight in Bengal in 2024.

One positive. The seat sharing may stem a possible drift in minority votes away from TMC. Sandwiched between Congress’ Himachal and Karnataka wins, the Sagardighi bypoll result signalled the drift when a joint Left-Congress candidate defeated the TMC in a minority-dominated seat.

But what if Congress sticks to the Left? Like the Congress, the Left too has marginally improved its vote share this election, possibly due to a ghar wapsi of the ‘baam’ vote that had gone to ‘Ram’ or BJP in the past. Good news for TMC that the Left is hurting BJP, but is that enough for a deal with the Left either in Bengal or Delhi?

Finally, there is no escaping the fear of history repeating itself. The 2019 history in 2024. After large-scale violence in the 2018 panchayat polls when many people could not cast their vote, revenge voting in 2019 brought the tally of TMC MPs down from 34 to 22 and sent the BJP’s numbers spiralling from 2 MPs to 18.

Mamata Banerjee will need to mollify the outrage of voters scarred by the violence in this panchayat poll to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself. She must tell her party workers that eating ballot papers for breakfast is injurious to health.

The author is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prashant)