WB Assembly polls | Violence intrinsically linked to polls in West Bengal, say experts

Halfway into the marathon 33-day, eight-phase Assembly polls in West Bengal, leaders of the 2 main political events are already speaking about how violent these ongoing elections are.

The ongoing 2021 ballot is being in contrast to the 2018 panchayat polls in the State. While Union Home Minister and BJP chief Amit Shah stated the Assembly polls have witnessed much less violence than the 2018 panchayat polls, Chief Minister and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee identified that the continued polls have seen way more violence with central forces deployed at polling cubicles opening hearth.

Violence has been reported in all 4 phases of elections up to now, together with killings of each TMC and BJP employees. However, the fourth part on Saturday which noticed 5 individuals killed at Sitalkuchi in north Bengal’s Cooch Behar district has turned the highlight on the violence. Four youths of the victims died when Central Armed Forces opened hearth at a polling sales space in Jor Pakti gram panchayat in the district.

An estimate, compiled by Professor of Political Science at Rabindra Bharati University Biswanath Chakraborty, primarily based on media studies, factors out that, 25 individuals have misplaced their lives in poll-related violence so removed from the day notification for polls was issued upto April 11.

Of the 25 deceased, 11 are supporters of Trinamool Congress, 13 of the BJP and one is a nine-year-old little one who died when a crude bomb exploded close to his home, he stated.

According to Prof Chakraborty, who can be a psephologist, up to now 34 candidates have been attacked. Four Trinamool Congress candidates, two from the Indian Secular Front, two from Congress and one from Left events had been attacked.

“Neither Mamata Banerjee can avoid responsibility from the violence nor can Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The comparisons that these elections are less violent or more violent than panchayat polls also serve no purpose,” he stated.

Prof Chakraborty, who says that Bengal has a historical past of violence being intrinsically linked to the ballot course of, feels that every one events ought to come on one platform and enchantment to their supporters to chorus from violence.

“This poll-related violence in West Bengal appears to be in sharp contradiction to the social religious and spiritual reform movements in the State where all political parties refer to names like Shri Chaitanya Deb, Ramakrishna Paramhansa and much later Raja Rammohun Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar,” senior journalist Biswajit Bhattacharya stated.

After independence, the primary opposition celebration in the State, the Communist Party of India, went underground in the Nineteen Fifties and the Naxal motion rocked the State in the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, he recalled, including that in the Assembly polls of 1972 there was widespread violence and rigging underneath Congress rule.

Experts and political commentators level out that the 2018 panchayat polls the place the Trinamool Congress received 34% seats uncontested and witnessed unprecedented violence. Mr. Bhattacharya stated the seeds of the violence in panchayat polls had been sown in 2003 when Left events received appreciable seats with out contest.

Prof. Chakraborty stated through the Left entrance regime violence was “strategically against the political opponents and the party was the tool”.

“The Left failed to successfully use the violence in the Darjeeling hills in 1980s and in Singur and Nandigram,” he stated ensuing in a regime change in 2011.

Unlike the Left regime the place violence was used just for electoral objective, the Trinamool Congress has legitimised it in all walks of life together with in college and faculty elections, added Prof. Chakraborty.

Both experts agreed that West Bengal is caught in a vicious circle of violence and space domination which is mirrored every time any elections are held.