News Analysis India

Tag: Bengal Polls 2021

  • Visva-Bharati announces lecture on reasons of BJP’s defeat in Bengal polls, cancels later

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: A virtual lecture on the reasons behind the BJP’s setback in the West Bengal assembly polls, to be organised by Visva-Bharati university next week, was cancelled hours after it was announced on Wednesday, varsity sources said.

    The lecture, “Why BJP failed to win West Bengal Assembly Elections” by Niti Aayog Joint Advisor Prof Sanjay Kumar, was part of the Visva-Bharati Lecture Series and Vice- Chancellor Prof Bidyut Chakrabarty was scheduled to preside over the programme.

    A notice inviting people to attend the lecture to be held at 4 pm on May 18 via Zoom platform was posted on the central university’s website earlier in the day.

    However, the authorities withdrew the notice, a copy of which is with PTI, from the website in the afternoon, sources said.

    A brief message – “Due to some unavoidable circumstances, this 35th lecture is treated to be as cancelled for the time being” – had been later added to the notice which is also not available on the website now.

    Visva-Bharati officials are not available for comment on the issue.

    The decision to hold a lecture on such a political issue by the university founded by Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore did not go down well with a section of the ashramites and the faculty.

    Veteran ashramite and Tagore family descendant Supriyo Tagore said, “Such blatantly political discourse should not be held in an institution like Visva Bharati associated with the ideals of Rabindranath.”

    Tagore founded Visva-Bharati in 1921 and it became a central university in 1951, 10 years after the bard’s death.

    A member of Left-leaning Visva Bharati University Faculty Association said, “The lecture on finding the reasons behind the BJP’s defeat by a Niti Aayog official would have compromised Visva-Bharati’s image as a liberal, independent institution.”

    The lecture showed the political leanings of the present management of the university, he claimed, saying that it is good that the programme was cancelled.

    In the West Bengal assembly election, the BJP bagged 77 seats while the Trinamool Congress secured a landslide victory winning 213 of the 292 constituencies that went to polls.

    Election was countermanded in two seats due to the death of candidates.

  • Bengal polls debacle: With mere 5.47 per cent vote share, Left stares at existential crisis

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: A graffiti on a central Kolkata wall said “Long live Marxism”.

    Someone with a wry sense of humour had cut out the word ‘live’ and scrawled ‘dead’ on top.

    The results of last week’s counting of votes cast in the crucial West Bengal elections seemed to bear this out.

    Not only had the combined Left parties drawn a blank in polls to the assembly which they had run with an overwhelming majority for 34 long years, their vote share had dwindled to a mere 5.47 per cent in 2021, down from 30.1 per cent in 2011 when they lost the elections to Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee’s juggernaut.

    In the clash of the titans where the TMC was in a straight fight with the BJP in most constituencies, the once all-powerful Left seems to have been squeezed into oblivion.

    Even in the 2016 assembly elections, the Left parties had managed to get 25.69 per cent of the votes polled.

    “We lost because other factors like anti-incumbency were overridden by people’s anxiety to halt the BJP from capturing Bengal,” admitted Nilotpal Basu, CPI(M) Politburo member and former Rajya Sabha MP.

    Analysts said that the TMC’s win was in part powered by a gain of at least five per cent of the popular votes which normally go to the Left, as electors decided to ignore issues like corruption to exercise their franchise against the BJP.

    “In 2019, when the BJP won 18 Lok Sabha seats and bagged about 40 per cent of the votes cast, the Left and the Congress had ceded grounds to the rightist party, this time the Left votes went to the TMC,” said Dipankar Bhattacharya, General Secretary of the CPI(ML)- Liberation party which came out with a ‘No Vote to BJP’ campaign.

    Bhattacharya, an alumnus of the Indian Statistical Institute and his team have been researching on the just- concluded elections at their office in Creek Row area.

    The sharp drop in votes polled has dismayed CPI(M) cadres, and the central leadership of the party will review the election results to analyse what went wrong and to chart out a future course of action.

    Even Jadavpur, long dubbed ‘Leningrad of the East’ which has elected a Left candidate in every election since 1967, except once, fell before the Trinamool onslaught.

    To rub in the humiliation, veteran CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty lost by a margin of nearly 40,000 votes to a little-known TMC debutante in a seat, where it was said that the Left “would win even if the party fielded a lamp post with the hammer and sickle sign on it”.

    “The Kolkata city voting patterns show that people decided to stop the BJP and they chose to gravitate towards the TMC it is a limited mandate from the Left-liberal- secular opinion against the BJP,” Basu said, adding “the ruling party should not consider this as their vote.

    As Leftist forces consolidate, it will regain this vote share”.

    However, independent analysts do not believe getting back vote shares will be a simple task for the Left parties led by the CPI(M).

    “The crisis the Left is facing is deep rooted. Its falling vote share is just an indicator of a deeper malaise,” said Rajat Roy, political analyst and member of the think tank Calcutta Research Group.

    The fall of the Left is underlined by the fact that just 17 years ago it was the third-largest party with 59 MPs of the 543-strong Lok Sabha, with 35 seats coming from West Bengal alone.

    Since then, its sway over the electorate has dwindled to a situation where it has no MPs from West Bengal in the Lok Sabha.

    CPI(M)’s vote share alone has fallen in recent years from 19.75 per cent in the 2016 assembly polls to 6.34 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when a whispering campaign “chup chap padma phoole chaap” (secretly vote for BJP) saw a section of its voters swung to the BJP as a reaction to TMCs attitude towards the Left.

    In 2021, the CPI(M) managed to garner just 4.73 per cent of votes polled as the pendulum shifted towards the TMC.

    “The once revolutionary party which rode to popularity on the back of peasants’ movements and trade union militancy has been living in a cocoon for long. Since the 1990s, instead of mass contact movements, it has depended on party apparatchiks like Laksman Seth of Haldia and Anil Basu of Hooghly to deliver votes. Their decline now defines the Left’s hold over voters,” Roy said.

    The CPI(M), which stormed into power in 1977 following a popular upsurge against then chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray’s brutal suppression of the Naxal movement, industrial stagnation and emergency excesses, had also failed to live up to people’s expectations with its inability to create jobs, encourage industry and by lowering public education and healthcare standards.

    However, insulated from the two major political upheavals that shook India in 1990s the Mandal agitation and the Ram Mandir stir and bereft of strong opposition, Bengal remained a unique Left citadel, even as the Communism crumbled in Eastern Europe and embraced capitalism in China.

    The rise of Mamata Banerjee’s strident street-smart politics in the late 1990s and 2000s, which used people’s movements against eviction of hawkers in Kolkata, agitations against land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram, severely challenged the Left.

    “The connect with ordinary people, which was their (Leftists) hallmark snapped. CPI(M) leaders were living in a world of doctrinaire, while the lower cadres were reaping the gains of office,” Roy explained.

    By 2011, Banerjee had breached the ‘Red fortress’ and by 2021, the Left was misreading its voters’ mind, Bhattacharya claimed.

    “The traditional Left completely misread the situation in this election. They should have seen the significance of the battle for Bengal. Here, we had a party backed by RSS, a ‘fascist’ organisation, out to capture Bengal. Yet they concocted slogans that equated the BJP and the TMC, and called them ‘two sides of the same coin’. This did not convince even their own people,” he said.

    The CPI(ML)-Liberation leader felt that class concerns where the “poor saw the BJP as a rich man’s party”, gender concerns raised by comments on “love Jihad and Romeo squads” and “issues of Bengali identity” united voters against “attempts to polarise them communally”.

    The Left’s electoral alliance with the newly-floated Indian Secular Front led by a conservative Islamic cleric, known for controversial comments, too did not go down well with Leftist liberals.

    “The tie-up with Abbas Siddique simply backfired on them,” said Bhattacharya.

    The Left, analysts believe, now has to reinvent itself and go back to mass contact movements to stay relevant.

    Cadres of Leftist students’ unions, who fanned out in districts of south Bengal to campaign for CPI(M)’s new faces such as JNU Students Union president Aishe Ghosh and party’s youth wing state president Minakshi Mukherjee, are expected to lead the mobilisation needed to bring back it into reckoning.

    “Our young candidates have got relatively good vote share. They are our hope,” Basu said.

    According to collated data based on Election Commission figures, the Left had registered its best-show in south-east Bengal where it received nearly nine per cent of the popular votes.

    This is also the region where most of the young faces were fielded.

    “Let us see what lessons the Left draws from its rout. We have to step up our role,” said Bhattacharya.

    While Roy added, “the key is mass connects, no party can survive without mass movements.”

  • Homemaker stands out amid BJP drubbing in Bengal, readies for MLA stint

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: The BJP might have fallen flat on its ambition to rule Bengal, but the party found the most unlikely winner in a 30-year-old homemaker of humble means who scripted a stunning victory, trouncing her nearest TMC rival by a margin of over 4,000 votes.

    A mother of three, newly elected Saltora MLA, Chandana Bauri, who followed in her husband’s footsteps and joined the saffron camp around five years ago, had never imagined she would ever be called upon to represent her constituency.

    As a party worker, she worked every day, cycling her way to various parts of the constituency from her home in Saltora, Bankura district, trying to “strengthen the organisation and ensuring that people in need get requisite help”.

    “I always thought contesting an election involved a lot of money, and that it wasn’t really a possibility, given the fact that we are not well-off.”

    “My husband is a mason, and the little that we save goes into funding my children’s education and meeting our daily expenses. However, when the local BJP leadership wanted to field me from Saltora, I realised that my work would speak for me,” Bauri said.

    Asked what prompted her to take the plunge into electoral politics, the newly elected MLA said “atrocities perpetrated by TMC activists” was a major reason behind her decision to contest the elections.

    “During the last panchayat elections, many from the BJP were not given a chance to file nomination, the legislator said.

    She alleged that party men and women were physically stopped from making an attempt to join the electoral fray and said, “I just wanted to do something to put an end to this anarchy.”

    She also stressed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s welfare initiatives, such as measures taken under Swachh Bharat Mission, were other reasons for her joining the saffron camp.

    Born in a humble family in Barjora area of Bankura, Bauri lost her father just two days before her Class 10 board exams began.

    Her mother did odd jobs to feed the family.

    “My mother weathered many a storm, washed dishes, sold cow dung cakes to eke out a living. I have four more siblings, and she made sure none of us went to bed hungry. She happens to be my inspiration. Women are capable of doing great things. I have learnt that from my mother and grandmother,” she said.

    Bauri, who still lives in a one-room mud hut, also thanked her husband and in-laws for being supportive.

    “I would wake up early, cook food and leave for mandal committee work. My in-laws and relatives, who live nearby, took care of my household when I was away. There are so many people who have helped me in my journey and I cant be grateful enough to them,” she told PTI.

    The BJP MLA said she wanted her children two daughters and a son — to pursue higher education and find jobs that would not just benefit them but touch other people’s lives, too.

    Talking about her plans to develop Saltora, she pointed out that the place still lacks proper roads.

    “I will definitely work towards developing the infrastructure in Saltora. Proper roads and clean drinking water top my list of priorities,” the BJP MLA said.

  • After Tathagata Roy lashing out at BJP over Bengal defeat, party veteran summoned to Delhi

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: BJP leader Tathagata Roy on Thursday said his party’s top brass has called him to Delhi at the earliest, a day after he criticised some of the measures taken by the saffron camp’s decision-makers ahead of the assembly elections.

    The BJP pocketed just 77 seats in the just-concluded Bengal polls, with the TMC having bagged 213 constituencies.

    The saffron party had set a target of winning over 200 seats.

    Taking to Twitter, the former governor of two northeastern states — Tripura and Meghalaya — said, “I have been asked by the party’s topmost leadership to come to Delhi ASAP. This is for general information.”

    Roy, during his interaction with reporters on Wednesday, had claimed that “unwanted elements” from the TMC was inducted into the BJP ahead of the assembly polls, and leaders having no idea or understanding of Bengali culture and heritage were made to helm the election campaign in the state.

    On the migroblogging site, he also wrote, “In the depths of my frustration I think of my icons Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay. How they had suffered and compared to that what is my suffering! Such thoughts, such suffering will not go in vain. Never!”

    In a no-holds-barred diatribe aimed at state BJP minders and the Bengal unit chief, he further tweeted, “Kailash-Dilip-Shiv-Arvind (KDSA) foursome have dragged the names of our respected Prime Minister and Home Minister through mud and have sullied the name of the biggest political party in the world. Sitting atop Agarwal Bhavan of Hastings (W Bengal BJP’s election headquarters).”

    On Tuesday, Roy, known for his controversial remarks and tweets, had said that three new female entrants in the BJP from the tinsel town, who got defeated by big margins, are “politically stupid”, raising several eyebrows.

    “What great qualities were these women possessed of? Kailash Vijayvargiya, Dilip Ghosh & Co must answer (sic),” he had tweeted.

    Reacting strongly to Roy’s jibe at his industry colleagues, Kanchan Mallick, an actor who fought on a TMC ticket and won the Uttarpara seat, “It is insulting for them even though they belong to my rival party,” he said.

  • ‘Not even 24 hours since I took oath as CM, central teams have started arriving’: Mamata lashes out at BJP

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said 16 people have lost their lives in post-poll violence in the state, and announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh each for their families.

    Banerjee, during a press meet here, also said that her government will provide jobs of home guard to one family member each of all five persons killed in CAPF firing in Cooch Behar’s Sitalkuchi area last month.

    She further said that a CID team has initiated a probe into the incident of firing in Cooch Behar that took place when the voting exercise was underway for the fourth phase of assembly elections, on April 10.

    “At least 16 persons – mostly from the BJP and the TMC and one of the Samyukta Morcha — died in post-poll violence. We will pay a compensation of Rs 2 lakh to their family members. Our government will also provide jobs of home guard to the next of kin of Sitalkuchi victims,” she said.

    Taking a swipe at the BJP, the CM said that the saffron party was yet to come to terms with people’s mandate.

    She accused central leaders of inciting violence in the state.

    “Not even 24 hours have passed since I was sworn-in as the CM, and letters, a central team have started arriving. This is because the BJP has not yet reconciled to the mandate of common people. I will request the saffron party leaders to accept the mandate,” she told reporters.

    “Please allow us to focus on the COVID situation. We do not want to engage in any squabble,” she added.

    A four-member fact-finding team of the Union Home Ministry, tasked with looking into reasons for the post-poll violence in West Bengal, arrived in the state on Thursday.

    Led by an additional secretary of the ministry, the team visited the state secretariat and held a meeting with the home secretary and DGP, sources said.

    The team, which will also assess the ground situation in the state, is likely to visit several areas in the city as well as South 24 Parganas, Godkhali, Sunderbans and Jaggadal, they said.

    The ministry had on Wednesday sent a terse reminder to the West Bengal government to submit a detailed report on the post-poll violence and to take necessary measures to stop such incidents “without any loss of time”.

    It has also asked West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar to give a report on the law and order situation in the state, particularly the violence that took place following the election results on May 2.

    Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said that 16 people have lost their lives in post-poll violence in the state.

    The BJP has alleged that TMC-backed goons have killed a number of its workers, attacked women members, vandalised houses and looted shops.

    Rejecting the charges, Banerjee had Wednesday said violence and clashes were taking place in those areas where BJP candidates emerged victorious in the assembly polls.

    Meanwhile, Trinamool Congress MLA Firhad Hakim hit out at the Centre for sending teams instead of COVID-19 vaccines.

    “They should send vaccines first, that’s the responsibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. We are grieved that some people have died, and action will be taken against the culprits.”

    “But, what will happen to the inoculation process which is stalled because of the vaccine crisis?” Hakim said.

  • Bengal’s champion sports trio, Dinda, Tiwary, Bose hope to recreate on-field magic in politics

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: Hitting sixes, bowling unbeatable bouncers or scoring hattricks have been their forte, but now Bengal’s iconic sportsmen – Manoj Tiwary, Ashok Dinda and Bidesh Bose- hope to replicate their magic in the game of politics.

    Having won their debut electoral battles, the trio are all excited about “making a difference” in their new innings.

    Mohun Bagan’s legendary leftwinger Bidesh Bose and former India batsman Manoj Tiwary won in Uluberia East and Shibpur respectively for the ruling Trinamool Congress that swept the West Bengal Assembly elections winning 213 of the 292 seats.

    Former tearaway Bengal pacer Dinda, who played under Tiwary for several years, on the other hand won it for BJP which garnered 77 seats in the West Bengal Assembly Polls.

    There was a fourth former sportsperson, BJP’s Kalyan Chaubey, who too was in the poll fray.

    However, the former India goalkeeper lost to TMC heavywieght Sadhan Pande, three years after he had lost the Lok Sabha election fight to Mahua Mitra in his political debut at Krishnanagar.

    Dinda, who contested from Moyna in Tamluk of East Medinipur district defeated TMC’s two-time sitting MLA Sangram Kumar Dolai by a thin margin of 1260 votes.

    “You can call it like getting five wickets in a debut match,” Dinda, who is Bengals second most successful bowler after Utpal Chatterjee, with 420 first-class wickets in just 116 fixtures, told PTI.

    Pitted against the TMC heavyweight Dolai, who had won the previous 2016 Assembly Polls by more than 12,000 votes, his “debut match” was not an easy task.

    “Like in sports, it was ‘sheer hardwork’ that clinched it for me,” the 37-year-old, who retired from all forms of cricket earlier this year, said.

    “Everyday I would go to one village after another and talk to people, understand their problems and give them my promise to make a difference for them,” he said.

    “They would say they had hardly seen the ruling MLA visit them for even five minutes in his five-year tenure.”

    “So what if my party has not won. The work will not stop. Maybe I won’t be in power but I can take the people’s voice to the Assembly and work for them,” Dinda said.

    Lack of a proper medical facility in Moyna is Dinda’s main concern.

    “The two government hospitals here are in a bad shape, often people die on way to Kolkata. My priority is to create a state-of-art medical facility here.”

    A former India player and one of the finest batsmen to have emerged from Bengal in the post-Sourav Ganguly era, Tiwary is committed to work 24×7 for people of Shibpur.

    “Politics is not an easy place for a newcomer from a different sphere. I had campaigned door-to-door in Shibpur locality. They were convinced by my honest intentions. I want to be a politician who will be available for his people 24×7,” Tiwary, 35, said.

    “As of now, tackling the COVID-19 crisis will be our first priority. Then we will go step-by-step.”

    “So is it curtains for his cricketing career? “Not yet. I will maintain my fitness. There is going to be no Ranji matches for a year. I will wait and see how it goes. But I don’t rule out playing a few more games for Bengal.”

    For the star footballer of the 1970s, Bidesh Bose, it is about listening to his “head coach” Mamata Banerjee’s instructions in scoring a winning goal as he defeated BJP’s Pratyush Mondal and Abbasuddin Khan of Indian Secular Front.

    In Uluberia Purba where Muslims comprise nearly 34 per cent of the electorate and where BJP had launched a high pitched campaign, Bose faced a stiff challenge from both Khan and Mondal but the rookie politician stayed grounded.

    “When Didi first had offered me this seat in March, I didn’t know how to go about it, how do I live up to her reputation.”

    “Then when I personally went there, met the people and heard their problems, I realised that this is altogether a different pitch. It’s a completely different Maidan. But it was just like another game,” Bose said.

    “I’m not a man of politics so I will play the game as my coach and assistant coach instruct. We have got good roads but what’s missing is good sanitation and drinking water. There’s a bit of conflict with this being a Panchayat area. This will be my main priority at this moment,” he concluded.

  • BJP weathers Trinamool storm in north Bengal, maintains Lok Sabha gains

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: Though the BJP failed to dislodge Mamata Banerjee from power, the saffron party managed to weather the TMC storm emerging triumphant in 25 of 42 constituencies in six districts of the region in the high- octane assembly elections.

    Nevertheless, the result was below BJPs impressive performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when the saffron camp was ahead in 31 assembly segments in Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Uttar Dinajpur and Dakshin Dinajpur.

    The BJP won seven of nine seats in Cooch Behar where five people were killed, including four in firing by CISF personnel, during the fourth phase of polling, while it bagged four of seven constituencies in Jalpaiguri, five of six in Darjeeling and whitewashed the ruling party in Alipurduar district which has five assembly segments.

    However, the saffron party emerged victorious from only one of nine seats in Uttar Dinajpur, and three of six in Dakshin Dinajpur.

    The tally of winning seats for the saffron party in north Bengal looks “reasonable even after the overall setback”, political analyst Subhomay Maitra said.

    The work of the RSS, helped influence tribal communities in northern districts of the state, helping the BJP gain popularity among people giving the party better results, compared to the south, Maitra said.

    The saffron camp has developed its organisational strength in several north Bengal districts and grown there organically, while in the south, more TMC rebels were inducted to combat the ruling party, Rabindra Bharati University Political Science professor Biswanath Chakraborty said.

    According to him, the TMC’s narratives themed around ‘Bengali pride’ and ‘insiders versus outsiders’ did not help the ruling party in north Bengal as a cosmopolitan culture exists in hills and Dooars region where people did not see the “BJP as a party of Bahiragato (outsiders)”.

    The BJP had also inducted leaders from various local outfits, stitching alliances with social groups, such as the Rajbanshis in Cooch Behar, to consolidate their foothold.

    Koch Rajboshis have a long history of seeking a separate Kamtapuri, and upholding of their language.

    The saffron party even wrested the Sitalkuchi seat where four people were killed as central forces had opened fire allegedly after coming under attack from locals on April 10, the day of polling, from the TMC.

    BJP’s nominee Baren Chandra Barman defeated Partha Pratim Ray of TMC by over 17,000 votes in this constituency.

    During the 2019 general elections, the TMC, however, had remained ahead in the assembly segment by around 1,200 votes and won it in the 2016 Bengal polls.

    “The saffron party’s identity-based politics, particularly relating to Rajbonshi people in north Bengal and Matuas in the south, helped the party, said Maitra.

    However, despite an attempt at religion-based polarisation, there was no state-wide consolidation of Hindu voters, he explained.

    “A section of them, who believe in a more liberal society or are familiar with the urban culture, somehow did not relate with the BJP’s campaign. This trend, which is prominent in southern states, was not reflected much in the north, ” Maitra told PTI.

    Moreover, the credibility of Trinamool Congress leaders, including two ministers who could not retain their seats, in north Bengal, was at stake as they failed to play their leadership roles, Chakraborty said.

    At a time when turncoats in southern districts lost their election battles this time, north Bengal witnessed a contrast with many BJP candidates, who switched over from the TMC, proving to be giant slayers.

    “Barring a few, several TMC rebels in north Bengal joined the BJP well before the assembly polls, contrary to what happened in southern districts.

    This augured well for the saffron party in the northern part of the state,” Chakraborty told PTI.

    North Bengal Development Minister Rabindranath Ghosh conceded defeat by over 23,000 votes in Natabari seat in Cooch Behar to his former party colleague Mihir Goswami who joined the saffron camp last year.

    State tourism minister Gautam Deb, who was seeking re-election from Dabgram-Fulbari seat in Jalpaiguri, lost to the BJP’s Sikha Chatterjee by over 27,500 votes.

    Chatterjee, a former state committee member of the TMC, left the ruling party in 2018.

    Veteran CPI(M) leader Ashok Bhattacharya from Siliguri, conceded defeat to Shankar Ghosh, his former protege who joined the BJP a few weeks before the polls.

    The ruling party managed to woo back GJM leader Bimal Gurung, who holds sway in many assembly seats in the hills and 11 Gorkha communities, but this effort seemed had its limitations as the BJP won five seats of the Darjeeling.

    According to political observers, growing resentment against the TMC government over “atrocities” perpetrated during the 104-day agitation in the hills in 2017, helped the BJP cement its foundation.

    The ruling camp had managed to fare well in the 2016 state polls when it bagged 24 assembly seats but the subsequent general elections in 2019 saw the trend change in favour of the BJP, which won all the six Lok Sabha seats in the six districts.

    The TMC supremo, however, was able to halt the saffron camp’s chariot in the region to a considerable extent and improve her party’s tally there, vis-a-vis results in the general elections held two years ago.

    The Mamata Banerjee-led party which had stayed ahead in just 11 assembly seats in the six districts of north Bengal in the 2019 polls managed to bag 16 constituencies there.

  • Dire crises spawned by COVID, political violence await Mamata as she strides back to office

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: The “Bangla nijer meyekei chay” slogan underpinned her aggressive election campaign that helped her outsmart the BJP.

    On Wednesday, Bengal’s own daughter she firmly pitched herself as, was sworn in as the chief minister of the turbulent state for the third succesive term amid raging fires of political violence and a rampaging pandemic.

    The distinction between Mamata Banerjee the leader and TMC the party evaporated into nothingness as she conquered West Bengal fighting the BJP’s election war machine led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah almost single-handedly.

    The victory for Banerjee, by far the biggest mass leader since the redoubtable Jyoti Basu who ruled West Bengal with an iron fist from 1977 to 2000, will not only help fortify her position in the state but also enhance her standing at the national level where voices from the opposition are getting feeble with time.

    A masterful practitioner of modern-day politics, she has wielded considerable influence beyond her own state, in the corridors of power in New Delhi, for a long time, sewing up alliances with both the Congress and the BJP.

    Since leading thousands of hungry, half-clad and angry farmers on the dusty streets of Singur and Nandigram over a decade ago, she ruled the state virtually unchallenged for eight years before the BJP vastly extended its influence and won 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019.

    For the 66-year-old spinster, the political journey from the restive alleys of Nandigram and Singur in 2007-08, when she waged a relentless battle against the Left Front government, to ‘Nabanna’, the seat of power in Kolkata, was as captivating as it was punishing.

    Although she cut her teeth in politics as a young Congress volunteer in her student days and rose to become a minister in UPA and NDA governments, it was in the crucible of Nandigram and Singur movements against forcible acquisition of farm land by the Communist government for industrialisation that her destiny and of the TMC took shape.

    She founded the TMC in January 1998 after parting ways with the Congress and it was through struggles, big and small, against the Communist dispensation that her party grew.

    In 2001, when the state had its first assembly polls after the launch of the TMC, the party bagged an impressive 60 seats in the 294-member House, while the Left Front clinched a staggering 192.

    In its second outing in the 2006 assembly elections, the TMC’s strength came down by half as it could pocket only 30 seats, while the Left scored a resounding victory with 219.

    The four years that followed were the most momentous in the contemporary political history of West Bengal as she put up a spirited fight against the Left Front government over alleged excesses in Singur and Nandigram.

    The assembly elections of 2011 were historic, as she decimated the Left in one of its longest-standing bastions.

    Banerjee’s party ended the Left Front’s 34-year unbroken stint in power, winning a whopping 184 seats, riding a massive public outrage against the communists, who were restricted to just 60 seats.

    It was then the longest-serving democratically elected communist government in the world.

    But power has many pitfalls and rising aspirations is one of them.

    A string of influential TMC leaders including Suvendu Adhikari, the MLA from Nandigram and a minister, deserted Banerjee and joined the BJP.

    Born into a Bengali Brahmin family, Banerjee, as a young Congress activist, formed ‘Chhatra Parishad’ unions in colleges.

    She rose through the Congress ranks rapidly and was called a giant slayer when she defeated CPI-M heavyweight Somnath Chatterjee in Jadavpur in the 1994 Lok Sabha elections held in the aftermath of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

    She lost the seat to Malini Bhattacharya in 1989, when an anti-Congress wave swept the country after the Bofors scandal came to light, the only time she lost an election.

    She won the Kolkata South Lok Sabha seat in 1991 which she retained in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2004 and 2009.

    As Minister of State for Sports in the P V Narasimha Rao government, the quick tempered leader announced her resignation and held a rally in Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground against what she believed was government’s neglect of sports.

    She was divested of all her portfolios including Women and Child Welfare and Human Resource Development in 1993.

    In 1996, she accused the Congress of behaving like a “stooge” of the Left and founded the Trinamool Congress in 1998.

    She joined the NDA in 1999 and was appointed the railway minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, and launched new trains and rail projects in West Bengal.

    Banerjee quit the NDA in 2001 in the aftermath of the Tehelka expose, which brought under cloud several ministers in the Vajpayee government, and aligned with the Congress again the same year.

    She was back in the NDA in 2003 and was appointed the coal and mines minister in 2004.

    She contested the Lok Sabha elections in 2004 as part of the NDA and her party lost badly.

    She was the lone Lok Sabha MP of the TMC from West Bengal.

    In 2006, the TMC fared abysmally in the state assembly elections.

    Before the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, she joined the Congress-led UPA and the alliance won 26 of the state’s 42 seats.

    She was beck as the railway minister.

    As public outrage grew over the Left Front government’s crackdown on protests in Nandigram that killed 14 people and injured scores more in police firing, Banerjee’s popularity grew exponentially.

    Singur and Nandigram became emblematic of mass resistance against the communist rulers, and in 2011 assembly elections, the TMC won a landslide.

    The TMC-Congress-SUCI alliance won 227 of the 294 seats.

    After being sworn in as the chief minister on May 20, 2011, one of the first decisions of her government was to return 400 acres of land acquired by the governent for Tata Motors Nano project to the farmers.

    The Tatas had already exited Singur.

    Banerjee launched a slew of welfare projects in health and education sector and for empowerment of women, and tried to strengthen the law and order machinery by setting up police commissionerates in Howrah, Bidhannagar, Barrackpore and Durgapur-Asansol.

    The BJP, rapidly expanding its influence in the state at the Left’s expense, accused her of minority appeasement after she instituted a stipend for thousands of imams and muezzins of mosques.

    The Kolkata High Court called it unconstitutional and stopped payment.

    She earned the BJP’s wrath when she banned the immersion of Durga idols in October 2016 till after observation of Muharram by Muslims.

    Ministers in the Banerjee government and key TMC leaders got embroiled in the Saradha and Rose Valley chit fund scam cases.

    Quite a few were jailed.

    Though these allegations indeed chip away at Banerjee’s popularity reflected in the BJP’s impressive showing in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, none of thesestuck in the assembly elections as her party triumphed with a two thirds majority and 213 of the 292 seats where polling was held.

    Election was countermanded in two constituencies on account of death of candidates from COVID.

    She won a mandate of the size nobody imagined, not even herself, but what awaits her is not a victory wreath but a dire challenge to pull the state out of the twin crises spawned by an unsparing coronavirus and retributive political violence.

  • Nadda vows to ‘save’ people of Bengal from chain of political violence

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: BJP president J P Nadda on Wednesday took a symbolic oath here to protect democracy and “save the people of West Bengal from the cycle of political violence”.

    Nadda, who had attended a dharna near a Gandhi statue in the central part of the city on Tuesday, said his party will ensure that the entire country gets to know about the widespread violence unleashed in the state following the declaration of assembly poll results.

    “I will be visiting districts such as North 24 Parganas to be on the side of our members who were at the receiving end of this brutality. We want to tell the entire country about this,” Nadda said at a programme organised by the saffron camp at its Hastings office here.

    The BJP has claimed that at least six of its workers and supporters, including a woman, were killed in attacks allegedly perpetrated by the TMC following its victory in the assembly elections.

    “We will continue to serve the help the people of Bengal and help them realise their dreams. We will strive to break this chain of political violence,” he said at the programme, which was attended by state BJP chief Dilip Ghosh among others.

  • Bengal violence: Trinamool worker stabbed to death in Ketugram; security provided to returning officer of Nandigram

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: A 54-year-old TMC worker was stabbed to death in West Bengal’s Purba Bardhaman district, police said on Tuesday.

    Srinivas Ghosh (54), a TMC panchayat member of Ketugram’s Agardhanga area, was stabbed alleged by members of the BJP on Monday night when he was returning home, they said.

    Ghosh was declared brought dead when taken to a nearby hospital, they added.

    Three people were also injured in the incident and are undergoing treatment, a police officer said.

    BJP denied the charges and said their members were in no way connected to the incident.

    Tension was palpable in the area after the incident.

    Police said a huge contingent of personnel was deployed to prevent any further flare-ups.

    Four persons were detained in connection with the incident, they said.

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    Incidents of violence were reported from other parts of the state as well.

    In Coochbehar district, the house of BJP activist Bharati Nandy in Dinhata was set on fire allegedly by TMC supporters, a police officer said.

    Incidents of violence were also reported from Tufanganj where houses of several BJP workers were vandalised, he said.

    At least 15 houses of BJP workers were vandalised in Howrah, police said.

    A probe has been started into the matter, they said.

    Meanwhile, the West Bengal government has informed the Election Commission that it has provided security to the returning officer of the Nandigram assembly constituency which saw a cliffhanger between TMC chief Mamata Banerjee and BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, sources said on Tuesday.

    Banerjee lost by 1,956 votes to former protege-turned-BJP adversary Adhikari.

    On Monday, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader alleged that the returning officer of Nandigram did not order recounting of votes even after she demanded it as he feared for his life.

    The sources said the returning officer was provided security in person and at his home on the directions of the Election Commission (EC), amid reports that he was under pressure while performing his duty.

    On Tuesday, the poll panel wrote a fresh letter to the West Bengal government asking it to take all appropriate measures to keep a strict watch and monitor on a regular basis the security provided to the officer.

    The EC has also asked that the officer should also be extended appropriate medical support and counselling.

    ALSO READ | BJP leader Gaurav Bhatia moves SC against violence in West Bengal; seeks CBI probe

    Citing the letter, the sources said that the state government has been told that any pressure or harm or even perception or furtherance of any such narrative shall have serious implications on the entire machinery deployed during the elections.

    The state’s chief electoral officer (CEO) has already been directed to ensure the safe custody of all election records, including polled EVMs and VVPAT machines, video recordings, and counting records strictly in accordance with laid down guidelines.

    The CEO will also coordinate with the state government for additional security measures at such locations, if needed.

    In a statement, the poll panel said election-related officers on the ground diligently perform in an extremely competitive political environment with full transparency and fairness.

    “And, therefore, attribution of any motive in such cases is not desirable,” it said.

    Referring to the developments on Sunday when votes were counted, the EC statement said each counting table had one micro observer.

    ALSO READ | ‘Remember, Trinamool MPs, CM also have to come to Delhi’: Parvesh Singh’s ‘warning’ after Bengal violence

    “Their reports never indicated any impurity of counting process on their respective table,” it said.

    No doubt was raised on the result of round-wise counting, which enabled the returning officer to proceed uninterruptedly with the counting of votes, the statement said.

    “On the basis of Form-17C duly completed by the counting supervisors, returning officer prepared a round-wise statement. In addition, on the computer installed in the counting hall, parallel tabulation work was also done in an excel sheet to counter check any human error,” it pointed out.

    A copy of each of the rounds’ result was shared with all the counting agents and after every round, counting agents signed the result sheets, the EC said.