Rahul Singh
Kolkata: When I reached out to my local contacts in Kolkata about heading to Bhangar in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district to cover the July 8 Panchayat elections, they cautioned me against venturing alone.
“One of our people will come with you,” they said.
It made sense since the area is remote and not particularly well-connected, despite being close to the modern township of Rajarhat (New Town) near the state capital. Also, it was most affected by violence in the run-up to the polls, recording a number of deaths.
There have been reports of violence in Bhangar ever since the poll process began. On June 15, the last day of filing nomination papers, all hell broke loose. Explosives were hurled, vehicles set afire in Vijayganj market and people were shot at. According to media reports, a supporter each of Indian Secular Front (ISF), a relatively new political party, and ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) lost their lives in the clashes.
ISF district president Md Abdul Malik Mollah alleged that TMC supporters blocked the road in front of the Block Development Office in Bhangar Block-2 in a bid to prevent ISF candidates from filing nomination papers.
“TMC MLA Saokat Molla gathered outsiders to stop us. When our candidates still managed to enter the office, explosives and stones were hurled at them. Our party worker Moinuddin Mollah (30) was killed in the incident,” he said.
Saokat, the MLA from Canning Purba constituency and TMC in-charge for Bhangar, claimed that his party lost two workers — Rashid Mollah and Raju Naskar — in the incident. “Another 21 supporters suffered bullet injuries and are under treatment,” he said.
Responding to allegations of outsiders thronging the place, Saokat said, “It was not us. They brought supporters and goons from outside, and we complained to both the police and State Election Commission (SEC).”
There were violent clashes in South 24 Parganas, Murshidabad, Uttar Dinajpur and Cooch Behar as well during the days of filing of nomination. At least 10 people died in alleged political violence within 15 days of the announcement of poll dates on June 8.
However, after the completion of nomination process filing on June 15, SEC said in a statement that no one had died in political violence in the state since the announcement of polls. The statement was based on a report from the state police.
Asked about the situation in the run-up to the election, BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari had said, “The situation is horrible. Central forces were not properly used, and the State Election Commission and the ruling TMC tried to mislead the people.”
Changing Political Dynamics
ISF, formed in 2021, is the main opposition party in Bhangar area. Communist Party of India (Marxist) is also an important player in Bhangar, but Congress and BJP are less influential. As part of a pre-poll arrangement, the CPI(M) and Congress had allied with ISF.
“ISF’s hooliganism prevails in Bhangar as it gets support from other parties. It works with the Left and Congress, and the BJP offers tacit support as 30% of the voters are Hindus,” claimed Saokat.
Senior journalist Ajay Vidyarthi told 101Reporters that Muslims constitute 67% of Bhangar’s population. Naushad Siddiqui, ISF’s lone MLA in the state representing Bhangar, is the great-grandson of Mohammad Abu Bakr Siddique, whose mazar (holy shrine) in Furfura Sharif village in Hooghly district attracts thousands of devotees.
“Siddiqui and family exercise influence over a large section of Bengali Muslims who are seen as a safe vote bank. His growing influence on the community is a matter of concern for the TMC, which is one of the reasons for the heightened conflicts,” Vidyarthi assessed.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is also emerging in the region and has influence over Muslims in many areas of West Bengal, which is also seen as a political challenge to the TMC.
The changing political dynamics have put the TMC in a spot, so much so that it counts on intimidation as an effective tool to garner votes.
“The TMC has a monopoly here. I am sure if there is a fair election, it will lose. The party workers do not allow other candidates to file papers to ensure that more TMC candidates are chosen as panchayat members and heads. The Opposition parties have also alleged that their candidatures were rejected citing ‘errors’,” Ahirul Haque, a member of the CPM Bhangar-2 area committee and resident of Chalta Bediya village panchayat, said.
Recalling how TMC men had haunted him during the 2021 Assembly polls, he said, “They pelted stones on my house as I refused to join their party.”
The Game Of No-Contest
The coercion is evident in the way many seats have gone to the TMC uncontested here in this election. Bhangar-2 has 218 village panchayat, 30 block panchayat and three district council seats. Of these, TMC won unopposed in 130 gram panchayat and 14 block panchayat seats, guaranteeing it the block panchayat chairman’s post.
Abdul Mollah said that nominations of 82 ISF and 19 CPM Panchayat member candidates were cancelled in this block alone, citing mistakes in poll papers.
The numbers in Bhangar-1 are even more stark. The Opposition has fielded no candidate in any of the block panchayat and district council seats. Thus, the TMC grabbed all 27 block panchayat and two district council seats. Bhangar-1 has nine village panchayats with 223 panchayat member seats. Only two went to polls, while 221 seats went to the TMC uncontested. No other party has won unopposed from any of the seats here.
While uncontested wins may show the acceptability and influence of the TMC, it also may indicate that the candidates of other parties were either afraid of entering the fray or were prevented from doing so. The fact that candidates have to move court to get permission for security arrangements before filing poll papers, tells a lot about the state of affairs in West Bengal.
Curiously, this ‘clean sweep’ in the block is an anomaly, and way above the state average where only 9.5% of the seats were won uncontested. In the 2018 panchayat elections, however, 34% of the seats were won uncontested, most by the TMC. Political observers have noted that TMC has consciously toned down its heavy-handed suppression of the democratic process this time, as it is believed to have cost the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.
Violent Redux In Bhangar On Polling Day
Over 2 lakh candidates competed in 73,887 seats in the single-phase panchayat elections on July 8, with 5.67 crore voters deciding their fate. Election day was a bloody affair too, with 15 deaths being reported from different districts. The voter turnout was 66.28%. Counting of votes will take place on July 11.
As polling progressed on Sunday, one death caused by head injuries in a bomb attack was reported from Phul Malancha polling station in South 24 Parganas. In another incident, two children suffered injuries when they picked up a crude bomb, mistaking it for a ball, at Kashipur in Bhangar. The injured siblings were admitted to a hospital in Kolkata. The area had seen ISF-TMC clashes late on July 7.
In Murshidabad, voting was halted after a clash erupted between BJP and TMC workers. In Cooch Behar’s Dinhata, ballot boxes were vandalised and ballot papers set afire. Locals destroyed a ballot box in Baranachina alleging bogus voting.
The TMC alleged that the pradhan (panchayat chief) of Bidyanandpur was brutally attacked by the Congress workers.
(Rahul Singh is a Jharkhand-based freelance journalist and a member of 101Reporters, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters)
