Declaration of the schedule of 2023 panchayat election has come during the Jan Jowar Yatra of Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee which apparently gives TMC a leg up in West Bengal rural polls scheduled to be held on 8 July. The polling date can be rescheduled to July 14 if Calcutta High Court insists. The HC is presently hearing the case.
Though Abhisekh’s his statewide journey is a warm-up of sorts before the rural polls to his party, the declaration of the election date coming a day after governor CV Anand Bose gave his nod to the appointment of former state chief secretary Rajiv Sinha raises several questions even as the Opposition does not quite seemed to be geared up to participate in the last significant polls in Bengal before the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
Time was when CPI(M) led Left Front seemed to be ever ready to take part in any elections. If CPI(M) state secretary Md. Salim stated clearly that there are no gaps in Left Front’s poll preparedness, there are dissenting voices in his party as also in other Left Front partners.
Senior CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha MP Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya pointed out that it has been planned that goons will play a significant role in the coming rural polls, his foreboding cannot be dismissed as a sign of pessimism if past records are anything to go by. In all, 27 persons died during the 2018 panchayat elections. Of these persons, the most significant was the death of a polling personnel, Rajkumar Roy. It is not yet known whether he was murdered or had committed suicide.
The shock over the deaths especially that of Roy is yet to subside. Bhaskar Ghosh, a leader of the state government employees agitating for enhanced dearness allowance has made it clear that state government personnel will stay away from the rural polls unless the polling booths are patrolled by central para military force personnel and there are 61,636 polling booths.
State election commissioner Sinha has however hinted that the state police personnel will supervise the rural polls. He has asked to keep faith in the state administration of which the state police is an integral part. But the apprehension of electoral violence refuses to go away even as the TMC is looking the other way from likely poll violence. Abhishek Bandyopadhayay has been reassuring that the TMC workers will ensure peaceful polling this time and there will be no repeat of 2018 violence.
Successive bomb explosions in different villages of West Bengal and deaths in them over the last few months have rocked the state before the rural polls. It sends a wrong message to the voters and does not amount to reposing confidence in the law and order machinery of the state which would oversee the panchayat elections.
The deaths apart, the 2018 panchayat election results were heavily tilted in TMC’s favour. In all, 34 per cent of the rural poll seats went uncontested from which Trinamool nominees emerged unchallenged winners while the Opposition outfits were loud in their protest that their candidates were prevented from filing nomination.
Truth to tell, Trinamool came out with a brute majority in 2018 panchayat election. In this three tier poll aimed to ensure grassroot democracy 95 per cent Zilla Parishads, 90 per cent panchayat samitis and 73 per cent Gram Panchayat seats were won by Trinamool candidates.
The allegation of some voters not being allowed to exercise their franchise also did the rounds in the 2018 rural polls. Trinamool Congress losing 18 seats to BJP in 2019 Lok Sabha elections has been interpreted by some of the political observers of an expression of the voters ire which led to their voting heavily in favour of saffron camp candidates. In 2019 Lok Sabha poll, just a year after the panchayat polls.
In fact, results of the 2018 panchayat elections were a clear pointer to the political contours of the state in the days to come. The BJP had emerged as second political party of choice after TMC in all the three tiers while it was followed by Congress and Left Front respectively. Both Congress and BJP have declared their intent to move court on the panchayat election. Online nomination, deployment of central para military forces and safety is being sought by the Congress.
While the CPI(M) state secretary sought to put up a brave face, there are other dissenting voices in his party other than Bikas Bhattacharya. The issue of scarcity of time given to the Opposition parties to file nomination is preceded by the short time span the candidates will be given to fill up their nomination forms. Senior CPI(M) leader and former MP Shamik Lahiri has computed that each nominee will get a measly 39 seconds. This is the time allotted to fill up the three page form in which there are 36 blanks needing to be filled up, he said.
The process which is aimed to empower the rural populace would end up in confusing the individuals who aspire to be the part and parcel of the empowerment procedure, Lahiri feels. Mistakes are likely to be made and the prospective candidates will be loath to take part in the election process again.
At a time when Abhishek Banerjee’s Jan Jowar Yatra is letting him interact with grassroot workers revving them up for the coming rural polls, chief minister Mamata Banerjee rolled out an outreach campaign hours before the announcement of the election date. She announced Shara Shari Mukhya Mantri (directly to the chief minister) which would enable the people to place their grievance to her directly through a help line.
It was a canny move before the rural polls which is aimed to underscore Banerjee’s image as a people’s leader. If the Opposition has labelled Jan Jowar Yatra to be a camouflage for training camps of rigging and other procedures aimed to subvert elections, it is at a loss for words to criticise the chief minister’s latest outreach programme.
The Left-Congress combination as of now has no roadmap for seat sharing in the crucial rural polls. The CPI(M) and its Left Front partners have taken the lead in filing maximum nominations in the first two days. The Congress is fumbling and there is no signs from the Congress leadership to take up the polls as a challenge to the TMC and the BJP.. The CPI(M) workers in the districts are proceeding on the basis of their own strength with the prospect of any alliance with the Congress getting sidelined.
The CPI(M) district leaders from Birbhum, Nadia, Burdwan (east) and (west) and several other south Bengal districts have voiced unwillingness to let Congress field candidates where the front has the organisational muscle. Their dissent if followed would certainly dent Congress Left alliance at a time when state Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Choudhury is pleading scarcity of time in the poll schedule in which the time frame for submitting nomination forms started on June 9 and ended on 15 June..
If the Congress leadership thought of contesting the election on the dependence of LF organisation, dissent of several district level CPI(M) leaders threaten to upset the former’s apple cart. On the other hand, thanks to its constant hammering of the Trinamool dispensation on issues including cash for teaching jobs, coal and cattle smuggling the Left are better prepared to take on Trinamool than Congress.
As for the BJP whose tally of seats was only next to Trinamool’s in 2018 rural polls , the party is on the backfoot now. By admission of a section of its leadership, it lacks booth committees in a major swathe of the state, a state of affairs unexpected of the principal Opposition party in the state Assembly.
Grounds of postponing the elections like too little time and poll personnel being unsure of their safety provided by state police force were being trotted out by national vice-president Dilip Ghosh during the day. Clearly state BJP unit appears to be in a shambles.
Jan Jowar Yatra of Abhishek Banerjee was aimed to earmark Trinamool candidates with a clean image in the rural polls. It has fallen far short of its target as several melees and confusion during his stopovers indicated.
Inter-party squabbles can turn out to be a bane for the ruling dispensation in the rural polls. But the TMC is most prepared with its huge mass base and organizational power, apart from financial resources. Both the BJP and the Left- Congress combination if it happens are far behind the TMC in terms of poll preparedness. As of now. Trinamool Congress is most advantageously placed to face the panchayat polls as against its contenders, BJP, the Congress and the Left. (IPA Service)
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