At last count, the number of deaths that occurred in the violence that took place in a few districts during West Bengal rural polls, stood at 16. The ruling political party Trinamool Congress (TMC) reportedly suffered the majority of losses with nine of its workers dying of different forms of attacks followed by Congress which lost three of its supporters while the Communist Party of India (Marxists) and Bharatiya Janata Party lost two supporters each.
The reason behind the casualties of the TMC being the highest is a matter of speculation. Political analysts attribute it to different reasons.
According to Prof Biswanath Chakraborty, political scientist and psephologist, the perception that the Trinamool’s rivalry is limited to its chief political opponents, BJP, Congress and CPIM, is inherently faulty. “The fact of the divisions within the party has to be factored in,” he told The Statesman, adding “one needs to see the violence from the perspective of the differences within the party.”
He pointed out that the “Nobo Jowar” outreach programme that was conducted by Abhishek Banerjee, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and TMC’s all India general secretary, was aimed at appealing to the people of the rural areas, especially to the youth, to ensure, among other issues, that peace prevailed during the polls. Conducted on foot and undertaken two months before the rural elections began on April 24, it was to prepare the ground for the Panchayat Polls.
“The youth wing of the Trinamool that he represents is a progressive and dynamic group which is keen on ushering in a changed atmosphere in politics,” says Chakraborty.
Pointing out that it is one of the influences of Prashant Kishore’s company which was hired by Mamata Banerjee to help the party fight off an advancing BJP before the Assembly elections of 2021, he says the youth wing nevertheless has met with stiff resistance of old loyalists of the party stuck in the past. This despite Didi’s full support as far as Abhishek is concerned, who now is considered Number 2 in the state government. The infighting between factions has been a reason cited for the deaths of at least a few of the party supporters.
However, the TMC, which has been accused of intimidating rival political parties from the day filing of nomination papers began on June 9, have, after the violent deaths of their supporters, shot back with counter allegations that if they were the ones perpetrating the violence, how is it that most of the dead belong to them? TMC spokesperson KunalGhosh, raised the issue at press conferences and post-election television interviews in various news channels.
Opposition political parties accused, as did Bengal’s leader of Opposition, BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, the state Election Commission for not being able to check the unbridled violence.
A section of political commentators say that to try and understand the violence in terms of comparative figures as to which political party lost the most and which political party lost the least and why would be to overlook the complex nature of the issue. The numbers cannot be explained, they say, in simple terms such as why the ruling Trinamool Congress Party lost more supporters in spite of allegedly being responsible for a great share of the earlier violence, when, during the filing of nomination papers (the week of June 8 to 15, it allegedly browbeat and intimidated candidates from rival political parties and prevented them from submitting their documents and papers.
The Trinamool, of course, denied the allegations, pointing out that thousands of Opposition candidates did file their nomination papers successfully and within the due date, but that is not the point here. The perception that Trinamool, as the party that rules the state, and therefore has access to power – including the power of police – to be the perpetrators of the bullying of rivals – assumes, somewhat wrongly and unfairly, that it is the only perpetrator and the others are mere victims.
“That assumption is far from the truth,” explains Tarun Ganguly, veteran political analyst who has covered Bengal politics for four decades.
First of all, violence during polls, irrespective of which political party committed it, is to be condemned, he said. “What needs to be considered is that these were attacks on each other by supporters of political parties. The dead happen to be the victims of the attacks. That makes it irrelevant about which party. The dead could have belonged to any of the political parties and they did,” he added.
The death of supporters of the Trinamool party indicates that they were as much victim of political violence as the rivals political parties. The deaths were caused by violence which was not one-sided point out the experts.