West Bengal is a state where poll-violence, booth-capturing, political murders and horse-trading are nothing new. The credit goes to Left Front who started this tradition during the mid 70s. The journey of the Left Front started with political violence like the notorious Sainbari killings where the Leftist goons killed two brothers who were Congress supporters. The goons drilled the eyes of the unfortunate eldest brother Nabakumar Sain after killing his two younger brothers in front of his eyes. The episode was like some Hollywood splatter movie where the goons forced the mother to eat the rice stained with the blood of her sons. The victims never got justice. After some years of the Sainbari killings, CPM formed the government and their misrule continued for 34 long years.
Mamata Banerjee‘s slogan was “Badla noy, Badol chai” which literally means- “we want change, not revenge”. She inherited a state where people were decent but the politics nasty and vile. The people of West Bengal hoped for a change when Mamata took the office of Chief Minister. Alas, the change did not come. She carried out the same tradition of political violence. Recently, some eminent politicians, especially Arvind Kejriwal, accused BJP of tampering the EVMs. In West Bengal, the ruling party does not need to resort to such technical methods because it solely believes in the old-school method i.e. resorting to violence. During the civic polls carried out at Darjeeling, Kurseong, Mirik, Kalimpongin, Raiganj, Pujali and Domkal in May 2017, TMC won four municipal bodies and Gorkha Janamukti Morcha won three. The elections were peaceful in the Hills and GJM won Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong. On the other hand, the civic polls were violent in Raiganj, Pujali and Domkal. TMC won these municipal bodies; especially Pujali and Domkal saw severe political clashes. It is safe to say that violence by the ruling party led to its victory.
The goons having allegiance to the ruling party attacked and vandalized the booths with hockey sticks, country-made pistols, cleavers, etc. They broke the EVMs and whoever tried to stop them, faced their wrath like a nightmare. The voters were severely beaten. In Pujali, the TMC goons were patrolling the booths and hurled bombs in ward no 10 due to which some men were injured. In Domkal, the TMC goons had beaten the opponent candidates and party workers, forcing them to withdraw their candidates from the civic poll. The Congress later tried to justify the withdrawal by calling it a democratic protest against the ruling party’s poll-violence. When local journalists tried to cover the news, the goons chased them and beat them up.
The poll violence again continued during the recent municipal elections at Durgapur, Dhupguri, Haldia, Cooper’s Camp, Paskura, Nalhati and Buniadpur. During July 2017, the BJP members from Durgapur accused some TMC leaders of threatening their candidates by sending “sada than” or “white saree” to the women of the family- just like the CPIM used to do during its misrule. The statement was simple- “step back from the election, else your women will become widow”. Two independent candidates were also threatened in the same manner. According to some reports, the TMC goons even threatened the female candidates of the opposition.
The poll saw the expected violence. Supporters of other parties were not allowed to vote. The goons of the ruling party even attacked the voters and threatened to harm their families. During the CPM rule, the Left Front had a biker gang called “Harmad Bahini” which was used to threaten the voters. Currently, TMC has built up its own Harmad Bahini and they were capturing the booths to help their party win at any cost.
The result was as expected. TMC won all the seven municipal bodies by having clean sweep victory at three bodies namely Durgapur, Cooper’s Camp and Haldia. BJP was at second position by winning one seat each at Panskura and Buniadpur. BJP also won four seats at Dhupguri.
TMC supporters rejoiced when the results were out. Though the victory was influenced by poll violence, they took jibe at the opposition candidates after the result. 40-years old Supriya Dey was a former two-time Congress councillor who joined TMC in 2012. When she was denied a ticket for the civic polls, she contested as an independent candidate. Due to unconstitutional behaviour by the ruling party, she lost to her rival Ashok Sarkar of TMC. The TMC supporters took a jibe at her for her loss. She felt humiliated and killed herself by having sleeping pills.
If you think that TMC has resorted to political violence only during the recent civic polls, then you are wrong. TMC crossed the limits of poll-violence when its goons threatened a CPIM supporter by beating his three-year old daughter during the 2016 assembly elections. The incident happened at Halisahar. In another incident, some TMC criminals had beaten a seven-year old girl because her grandfather voted for the opponent party in the fifth phase of assembly elections in 2016.