Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 23 July 2018 | Page 16
COU RT F ROW NS
SANDIPAN CHATTERJEE
Uniform
Political
Code
The sheer number of uncontested seats
in Bengal’s rural polls draws the SC’s ire
by Dola Mitra in Calcutta
I
N the bruised and battered offices
of the Opposition political parties
in West Bengal, the mood is finally
upbeat. Taking note of the enormous
numbers of seats that were won
uncontested by the ruling Trinamool
Congress in the Panchayat polls held
in May, the Supreme Court in a July
3 order has asked the State Election
Commission (SEC) to furnish detailed
information about the same. The rural
polls were concluded amidst reports of
unprecedented rigging and violence all
egedly committed by TMC goons, with
Opposition candidates declaring that
they were prevented from contesting
due to large-scale intimidation and
bloody mayhem. The apex court has
asked the SEC to explain why, of the
48,650 gram panchayat seats, 16,000
went uncontested. In fact, out of a
total of 58,692 (including 825 zilla pari
shad and 9,217 panchayat samiti seats),
20,159 seats went to the ruling party by
default. The situation was especially
dire in Birbhum, Bankura, Murshi
dabad and Poorva Bardhaman districts.
“The SC order has restored our faith in
our democratic institutions,” BJP’s
Chandra Kumar Bose told Outlook. “We
were shocked by the brazenness with
which attacks on the Opposition was
taking place right under the nose of the
SEC.... It began at the nomination stage,
continued throughout, even extending
to the day of counting.”
The Opposition’s allegations were
corroborated by dozens of news channel
videos—of candidates being dragged out
of the chambers of block development
16 OUTLOOK 23 July 2018
officers, the venue for submitting nomi-
nation documents, and subjected to
brutal physical assault. Goons, their
faces covered with handkerchiefs, ram-
paged through the country roads, bran-
dishing weapons. Bombs—the terror
weapon of choice for parties in Bengal—
were used widely. Polling day was as
violence prone, and on the day of count-
ing news cameras captured images of
thugs entering counting centres,
snatching ballot papers and stamping
them randomly. Ballot boxes were sto-
len, thrown into ponds, or set afire. In all,
poll-related violence claimed 30 lives.
As much as 34 per cent of the seats went
uncontested.
“I decided not to contest a panchayat
samiti seat because the night before I was
to file my nomination, some people vis-
ited our house at night, called out my
husband and told him, ‘for the sake of
your wife’s honour, make sure she doesn’t
go anywhere near the BDO office tomor-
row’,” said a 31-old woman in South 24
Paraganas district. “It was not worth it.”
But Trinamool has readily stonewalled
such allegations. “They are not fielding
candidates as they don’t have that many
people, not because we are threatening
them,” a Trinamool local leader from
Jhargram told Outlook.
The panchayat poll
violence continued from
the nomination process to
the counting day. Scores
died; 34 per cent of seats
were uncontested.
Voters on the panchayat elections
polling day in West Bengal
The view from the other side resem-
bles scorched earth. “Our candidates
were beaten up and the SEC, in charge of
the ‘free and fairness’ of the polls, was
looking the other way. This is because
the organisation has become a puppet in
the hands of the state government,
doing their bidding,” says Congress
leader Om Prakash Mishra. CPI(M) MP
Mohammed Selim tells Outlook, “Dur
ing Left rule, the SEC worked inde-
pendently. To reduce the poll panel to
a puppet in the hands of the state
gov
ernment and the ruling party is
unprecedented.”
Psephologist and political scientist
Biswanath Chakraborty says, “Bengal
elections have never been free from vio-
lence perhaps because it has been an
integral part of Bengal’s political history.
From the Partition riots to radical ideol-
ogies like Naxalism which originated
here, certain types of violence, such as
armed struggles, have been a part of life.
Therefore, political parties do not alw
ays distance themselves from violence,
as though it was for a ‘just cause’. That
this is not acceptable in a democracy is
something that has not been empha-
sised whether during Congress rule,
when Emergency was declared, or the
three-and-a-half decades of Left rule.
However, the just-concluded rural polls
have surpassed any previous record of
violence and is an indication that polls
are being controlled by hooligans.”
If faith in the democratic process was
throughly shaken, the recent Supreme
Court order has restored it. O