© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Of the 18 people killed in polling-related violence in West Bengal panchayat elections since Saturday, 14 belonged to the minority community. For the Trinamool Congress, this is worrying news as it indicates a strong Opposition pushback in minority areas which the ruling party could till recently consider solidly behind it.
All through Saturday, incidents of violence were reported from the districts of Murshidabad, Malda, North and South Dinajpur, North and South 24 Parganas and Burdwan, many from areas where more than 30% of the population is Muslim. Most incidents of confrontation are believed to have involved the TMC on one side, and the Congress, Left and the Indian Secular Front (ISF) on the other, barring Murshidabad, where different TMC factions reportedly took on each other.
The ISF, which is fighting its first election in the state since the last Assembly polls, when it won 1 seat, is pushing hard to emerge as a contender for the Muslim vote in Bengal. Right till the run-up to the polls and election day, one of the worst violence-hit areas remained Bhangar, from where the ISF won its sole MLA seat.
The Congress too has traditionally enjoyed Muslim support.
A senior state government official said, “In panchayat elections, violence generally occurs in districts where Opposition parties are strong. A close look at these districts would reveal that minority voters are no longer totally committed to the TMC.”
CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty claimed the politics of religious polarisation practised by both the TMC and BJP was being rejected. “People of Bengal don’t like such politics. The panchayat election results will prove that.”
West Bengal Congress president Adhir Chowdhury said the TMC knows that the minorities now realise that the Congress is “the only force with the credibility to fight the BJP”. “The TMC also realised after the Sagardighi bypoll loss that the binary it had created in 2021 (of Hindus vs Muslims) no longer exists. Because of that, it created so much terror before the panchayat elections.”
BJP leader Samik Bhattacharya said what had happened was that the minorities had also voted for the party. “The TMC had created a phobia for the BJP among the state’s minorities. But the minorities are now realising that they have been deceived, so they are growing apart from the TMC.”
Playing down the implications of the violence in minority-dominated areas, a TMC leader said: “Most clashes occurred in these areas due to inner-party fights over ticket distribution. It doesn’t imply that our minority votes have decreased.”
However, several recent decisions by the government and the TMC indicate the party is worried. Already reeling from corruption blows, with senior leaders caught under various charges — including related to school recruitment, which directly hit hundreds of common people — the TMC was unprepared for the Sagardighi bypoll loss in January this year to the Congress, whose candidate was backed by the Left Front and ISF.
The bypoll was necessitated by the death of sitting TMC MLA Subrata Saha. The TMC had been winning the Murshidabad seat since 2011, and the loss was the first clear indicator that the party could no longer count on the Muslim vote being entirely behind it.
Since then, the TMC has made several tweaks to reach out to Muslims, including the removal of Md Ghulam Rabbani from the state’s Minority Affairs Department, and the creation of separate development boards for minorities and for migrant labourers.
In May, the TMC succeeded in getting the Congress MLA who had won from Sagardighi, Bayron Biswas, to defect to the party. It was a big blow to the Congress which did not win a single seat in the 2021 Assembly polls and hence got its first seat in the House via the bypoll.
