Everything goes on as usual in the state. Only brand name has changed from CPM to TMC. Worship Mamata or face the consequences is the order of the day
Asim Kumar Mitra
The same old story is repeated in West Bengal when any election comes round the corner. No matter how big or how small is the range of the election. Recently seven civic bodies had elections on May 14. Almost all political parties of the state including BJP, Congress, SP, FB, SUCI, etc cried foul about the election, as it was tampered with by the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).
This is a legacy inherited by the ruling party from Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Congress. Funny enough that these two ‘gurus’ of the ruling party have become ‘Sadhus’ to proclaim that when they were in power everything was crystal clear. Those stories have been published in Organiser a number of times. So no repetition is required.
This time State BJP president Dilip Ghose complained against the violent activities of the ruling TMC. The Election Commission did not pay any heed to it. After the election was over, it was reported “but the election was marred by unprecedented violence that left several people injured and pit the states opposition parties against the Bengal Election Chief”. Most of the opposition parties demanded cancellation of the civic poll results, which the Calcutta High Court refused.
On May 22, The Telegraph in Kolkata carried a story with the headline saying, “If 18 voters did die, Ghosts must have voted in this booth”. This doubt crept in when it was found that “votes cast appear to exceed
number of living and listed people in a slice of Pujali that went to municipal polls”. In fact, The Telegraph had printed facsimiles of Death Certificates and said “The seemingly mathematical impossibility has been recorded in a booth in Pujali, a South 24 Parganas Municipality, 30kms from Kolkata, where election were held on May 14. But the BJP district president Abhijit Das claimed his party had collected copies of the death certificates of 18 of these voters.” The BJP leader Das showed the copies of death certificates to the reporter of The Telegraph and the reporter on his part had confirmed the authenticity of those death certificates.
In the meantime, Calcutta High Court has allowed a petition by the Congress for cancelling the poll results of Municipal election of May 14. It is set to start hearing the petition to cancel polling and nullify the results on account of large-scale violence and allegation of booth capturing. The seats which went to the polls included Darjeeling Kaliompong, Mirik and Kurseong in the hills and Domkol, Raygong and Poojani.
People are eagerly waiting to see the end result of this hearing. But for the time being they are amused to notice that the TMC had to be satisfied with its routing in mountain areas of West Bengal. Among the four Municipalities, the TMC had to be satisfied with only one civic body i.e. Mirik.
In the mountain areas of North Bengal there was direct understanding of the BJP with the GJM and the poll result was remarkable. In Darjeeling, Gorkha-Janamukti-Morcha (GJM) and BJP combine wins 31 out of 32 Municipal seats in Darjeeling, the biggest and most important of the hill towns. Here TMC wins only one. GJM-BJP trounces TMC in Kalimpong municipality. Out of 23 wards GJM-BJP won 18 wards. An independent candidate backed by GJM won one ward.
The results of one municipality in South Bengal–Pujali—is worth reviewing as BJP was the only party to win two wards in Pujali municipality and of course, Congress has won one ward. Remaining 15 wards were captured by the ruling TMC. But the fact remained that immediately after the results were declared the Congress joined hands with the TMC.
The ruling party started strong arm tactics to pressurise the two BJP winners to join the TMC. They started intimidating them with dire consequences. Ultimately, they succumbed to the pressure created by the TMC. This is the political situation prevailing everywhere in West Bengal. In this, you just cannot exert your
political rights let alone the human rights. Only “Mamata Puja” has become the order of the day and in this privilege class is the so-called minorities.
