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Journalism of Courage
On Wednesday, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the Congress leader in the Lok Sabha and West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee (WBPCC) president, again sat on a dharna outside the block office at Burwan in Bengal’s Murshidabad district to demand action against the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) activists who allegedly attacked the Congress workers. Adhir spoke to The Indian Express over the phone from there about the spate of political violence which has rocked the state ahead of the panchayat elections, among other issues. Excerpts from the interview:
Our candidates were prevented from submitting their symbol – the B form – on Tuesday. They were physically assaulted and the B forms snatched from them. The Congress will not be able to fight the (panchayat) elections in this block. In order to secure our right to fight the elections, I have been sitting in demonstration outside the block office since Tuesday. Even before the elections were announced, the ruling party (TMC) had unleashed a reign of terror across the state. Hooligans and miscreants of all hues belonging to the ruling dispensation are having a field day to commit all kinds of atrocities and violence. The police are simply dancing to the tunes of the ruling dispensation. So we are getting no support from the police, the civil administration, both of whom have become stooges of the ruling party.
The situation is terrible. During the last panchayat elections in 2018, the situation was similar. The last election was also marred by bloodshed, murders and violence. In the last panchayat election, 34 per cent of the voters could not exercise their franchise because of intimidation, violence and atrocities perpetrated by the ruling dispensation. And on the election day, 69 persons belonging to the Opposition parties were killed. 20,000 seats were won by the ruling dispensation uncontested. Never ever in a country like India you will see such a gory experience. We are witnessing the same situation this time also. We had approached the State Election Commission (SEC) and the High Court. We were fortunate that the High Court took our complaint very seriously…they took serious cognisance and directed the SEC to deploy central forces. The deployment of central forces is absolutely necessary for ensuring free and fair elections. But the state government surprisingly approached the Supreme Court challenging the High Court verdict. That shows the double speak of the government. The state government had been nurturing a very sinister design to continue their dominance in rural Bengal. The SEC is playing second fiddle to the ruling dispensation. It is a pathetic situation.
The Supreme Court has upheld the verdict of the high court. But the central forces will be deployed under the superintendence of the state government-appointed SEC. There lies the crux of the problem. Because the same SEC, the same police, I am more than sure, will mislead those central forces. So it is a tricky situation. There are a number of loopholes. Panchayat and municipality elections are held under the superintendence of the SEC and police. In stark contrast, when a by-election was held (recently) in the Sagardighi Assembly constituency, the central forces were deployed adequately, and people came out to vote feeling safe and secure. Consequently, the Congress won the seat by a margin of more than 23,000 votes. In the last Assembly election (in 2021), this seat was won by the TMC by a margin of 53,000 votes. What does it show? If voters are allowed to cast their vote in a peaceful manner, the result could be different. The ruling party knows that if panchayat elections are held in a peaceful manner, they will suffer a setback.
Yes. Out of fear and because of intimidation. That is a different issue. But not even a single voter went with him. We are seeing the politics of intimidation and the politics of terror in a manner unprecedented in the history of Bengal.
It is not my duty to say how those discussions will be held or not. But the grim reality is what I just told you. Mamata Banerjee is constrained to participate in the Opposition meeting because she is fast losing her national stature. It is nothing but a ploy to establish herself as a political leader at the national level. She is joining the Opposition leaders in Patna and not in Delhi. There lies another hypocrisy.
She (Mamata) is not at all sincere in stitching or forging any alliance. She is a great underminer of alliance politics. There are examples galore. She has always played the role of a Trojan horse to undermine Opposition unity so that the Opposition could not be consolidated. She never uttered a word when Rahul Gandhi was disqualified as an MP and when he was asked to vacate the official residence. There was not a word of protest from her. She deployed all her might to contest the Congress in Goa, Meghalaya and Tripura. Not only that, when the Opposition parties unanimously decided to field a joint candidate against Mr Dhankhar (for Vice-President’s election), she opposed. So there are several examples which show that she is not sincere (about Opposition unity). What has happened now is that she has been losing her national stature, her party has been reduced from a national party to a state party. So she is now striving hard to gain some sort of political heft in order to sustain herself. But in Bengal the situation remains the same.
In Bengal, we are fighting the twin devil – between Scylla and Charybdis. On the one hand, there is communal politics and on the other hand there is the politics of violence and terror with an admixture of communal tinge.
