Ahead of 2024 elections, TMC strengthens rural hinterland; wins Bengal rural polls

Kolkata: In West Bengal's violence-marred rural elections, the incumbent Trinamool Congress on Wednesday swept all zila parishads while leaving its competitors well behind, according to results released by the State Election Commission.

With a clean sweep of 880 seats in the three-tier panchayat system's 20 Zila Parishads, the TMC defeated the BJP, which was its closest competitor, by 31 seats out of 928 available. While other candidates gained 2 additional seats, the Congress-Left Front coalition won 15 seats.

The TMC has won over 35,000 gram panchayat seats, out of the 63,219 gram panchayat seats. However, though the counting was over exact figures were not known as the compilation and dissemination process was not complete, said officials.

The ruling party’s nearest rival BJP has won nearly 10,000 seats. While the Left-Congress alliance won over approximately 6,000 seats.

It was TMC’s aim discussed in party inner circles that the party win big time in the rural polls but without resorting to violence, in a manner which would help it consolidate its rural base ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections while assuring its urban voters alarmed by tales of corruption that it remained a strong yet ‘bhadralok’ (well behaved) party.

In the 2019 general elections, the TMC had suddenly seen its Lok Sabha seats come down by 12 to just 22, while BJP gained hugely and managed to win 18 LS seats, the equivalent of 164 assembly segments.

This was worrying for the regional party with national ambitions. The 2021 state assembly elections fought on the slogan of ‘Bangaliana’ against the “invading forces of the BJP” reversed the trend and TMC was able to restrict the saffron camp to just 77 assembly seats, winning a massive mandate of 215 seats in a house of 294.

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.

The result was TMC now controls most gram panchayats in these districts as well as 20 zila parishads. Two districts – Darjeeling and Kalimpong – do not have zila parishads, but their two-tier panchayat system is now controlled by a new Gorkha party- Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha- which is not at odds with the TMC.

This happened despite the BJP increasing its gram panchayat tally from 20 per cent of contested seats in 2018 to 27-28 per cent this time round.

However, in strategically taking on the BJP, the TMC’s battle against the Left-Congress combine though fierce in districts like Murshidabad and Malda, has been muted elsewhere, allowing the duo especially the Left to consolidate and clawback from its 2021 position where it won less than 5 per cent of the popular vote and no assembly seats. In all the UPA allies managed to double their gram panchayat seats compared to 2018.

The districts where the BJP thought it was entrenched, that is it was the dominant political party – Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, Jhargram, Bankura, Purulia, much of East and West Midnapore, pockets in Nadia, Hooghly, North and South 24 Parganas – it failed to win the majority of the gram panchayats and consequently it did not win the top tier zilla parishads.

Counting of votes for the three-tier panchayat polls which began at 8 am on Tuesday at 339 venues spread across 22 districts is over “though it will take some more time to upload the results on the SEC website,” an official said.

However, in this high-stakes battle, all parties indulged in and were victims of violence unleashed by their supporters for the most part without the sanction of their respective party's high command, mainly out of local power play compulsions.

The violence which began with the announcement of elections resurfaced on counting day. In Bhangore in South 24 Parganas, three persons including two activists of the Indian Secular Front (ISF) were killed and several others injured in a clash which took place outside a counting booth late Tuesday night, police said on Wednesday.

A 24-year-old Congress worker died on Wednesday while several others were injured after a clash between TMC and Congress supporters in Rampur village in Malda district, police said.

Similarly, a TMC worker from South 24 Parganas district’s Chandpasha village was hacked to death by rivals.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday came out after several days of recuperation after an injury sustained while campaigning and said she is saddened by the loss of lives during the rural polls.

“I am saddened at the loss of lives in sporadic incidents of violence during panchayat elections… The polls were held in 71,000 booths, but incidents of violence took place in not more than 60 booths,” she said.

The chief minister claimed that 19 people, mostly from her TMC, died in poll-related violence since the election date was announced on June 8.

Police sources, however, have put the number of fatalities at 38 but agree that at least 60 per cent of those who lost their lives were affiliated with the TMC.

Allegations of vote tampering and violence by various parties forced the SEC to order re-polling in 696 seats on Monday, which passed more or less peacefully. Intervention by the Calcutta High Court had seen the deployment of central police forces on both election and counting days.

Though Bengal has a long history of violent rural polls with 40 people killed in one single day of polling during the 2003 panchayat elections, this year’s violence which was covered extensively by the media and focused national attention on it.

The elections are being closely watched by all parties as an indicator of which way the wind will blow in the 2024 parliamentary elections from this part of the country.

State Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the election has already been reduced to a farce.

“According to our apprehension, violence, nexus between the ruling party, police, and the state election commission and unprecedented violence has led to the death of more than 40 persons. After the counting, post-poll violence will be unleashed,” he said.

BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad who arrived on Wednesday here leading a fact-finding team, said, “Violence and killings during rural polls are unacceptable. So many people have been killed; why have so many people had to die in this election? We will visit the violence-hit areas of north and south Bengal. Later, we will submit our report to our national president JP Nadda”.

All the counting venues are manned by armed state police personnel and central forces, with prohibitory orders under Section 144 of CrPC being imposed outside the venue to avoid any untoward incidents.

With PTI inputs