At last count, the number of dead in the July 8 West Bengal rural polls violence stood at 16. Of these reportedly the ruling political party Trinamool suffered the majority of losses with nine of its workers dying of different forms of attacks. This was followed by Congress which claimed that three of the dead were its supporters. The CPIM claimed that two of the dead were its supporters and BJP claimed that it lost two of its supporters. 

Trinamool, which has been accused of intimidating rival political parties from the day that filing of nomination papers began on June 9, has, after the violent deaths of their supporters, shot back with counter allegations that if it was the ones perpetrating the violence, how is it that most of the dead belong to the party? Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh raised the issue in press conferences and post-election television interviews on various news channels.

Advertisement

Opposition political parties accused, as did Bengal’s leader of Opposition, BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, the state Election Commission of not being able to check the unbridled violence. 

Political commentators point out that the deaths from violence during polls cannot be explained in simple terms.

“First of all, violence during polls, irrespective of which political party committed it, is to be condemned,” said Prof Biswanath Chakraborty, psephologist and political scientist.  “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.” 

“The assumption that Trinamool is the always the perpetrator and the others are victims is as incorrect as assuming that the Opposition is attempting to defame Bengal by creating trouble during elections, as the Opposition has often been blamed for doing,” said Tarun Ganguly, veteran political analyst.

“It’s more complex than that. While the state government or in this case the state election commission can be questioned on the inability to contain violence, one cannot blame the rurling Trinamool party alone for the violence. The deaths of supporters of the Trinamool party indicates that they were as much victims of political violence as the rivals political parties.”

The deaths were caused by violence which was not one-sided pointed out the experts.