TMC sweep of Bengal polls sets trend for 2024?

The ruling Trinamool Congress steamrolled to a massive victory in West Bengal’s violence-scarred rural polls, bagging all zila parishads and leaving its rivals trailing way behind in results declared by the State Election Commission.

However, even the normally vibrant ‘Didi’, has been ‘cautiously ecstatic’, to borrow the merchant bankers’ oxymoron, as the scale of victory will depend on the final orders of the Calcutta High Court which are pending.

The TMC won all 20 Zila Parishads in the three-tier panchayat system, winning a straight 880 seats, while its nearest rival BJP won 31 seats out of 928 seats.

The Congress-Left Front alliance won 15 seats. The TMC has won over 35,000 gram panchayat seats, out of the 63,219 gram panchayat seats.

But the Calcutta High Court said that the panchayat elections in West Bengal and the declaration of results will be subject to its final orders in connection with matters that it is hearing over allegations of electoral malpractices on the day of polling.

The court directed the State Election Commission (SEC), the state government, and the central government to file affidavits dealing with all the allegations made in three petitions alleging malpractices.

Alleging large-scale violence and electoral, a motley of petitioners through PILs had prayed for a direction to the SEC to conduct repolling in around 50,000 booths. In reality, so far repolling was done in only 696 booths.

The court directed that the matter will be taken up for hearing on July 19. Taking a dim view of the SEC, the bench said it is of prima facie view that the response from the Commission is not adequate.

The petitioners also sought direction from the CBI to register an FIR and conduct investigation into the violence and electoral malpractice and a forensic audit of the video footage of the polling booths and a forensic audit of the ballot papers by an independent agency.

TMC concentrated on the districts the BJP had done well in the past – North Bengal’s Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, and Alipurduar, western Bengal’s Jhargram, Purulia, East and West Medinipur where BJP leader Suvendu Adhikary calls the shots as well as pockets in southern Bengal.

TMC now controls most gram panchayats in these districts as well as 20 zila parishads. Police sources have put the number of deaths at 38, but agree that at least 60 percent of those who lost their lives were affiliated with the TMC. On record, 40 people were killed in one single day of polling during the 2003 panchayat elections Seizing the opportunity to hit out at the TMC, BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad arrived with a four-member fact-finding team of the BJP, to visit the violence-hit areas of north and south Bengal and submit a report to BJP president JP Nadda.

The fallacy is that in Manipur where the BJP rules, it had filed FIRs against the independent fact-finding team which visited the ethnic violencetattered state, a point reminded to Prasad by TMC. What also remains undisputed is the overwhelming popularity of Didi, who virtually acted as a ‘one-woman army’ as she staved off multiple challenges from the BJP and the Congress-Left.

This despite all the support the BJP received from the party-led Central government which has been trying its best to make things difficult for Mamata.

Going by the indications emerging from the local polls, it remains to be seen if the BJP will be able to retain the 18 Lok Sabha seats it won in West Bengal in the parliament polls in 2019.

Didi continues to tower over West Bengal politics and there are enough indications that the TMC may continue its winning streak when the all-important parliament polls are due in 2024.