Why the BJP needs to talk up political violence in Mamata Banerjee’s West Bengal
The bitter battle for the 2019 General Elections in which Indians will vote to elect the representatives of the 17th Lok Sabha is underway, and the most bitter chapter of this big battle is unfolding in West Bengal — Mamata Banerjee’s turf that Amit Shah and Narendra Modi are trying hard to breach.
In the backdrop of the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) alliance in Uttar Pradesh, and the Congress using eastern UP as a launchpad for Priyanka Gandhi, the BJP is aware it can’t repeat the success story of 2014, when it won 71 out of UP's 80 seats on its own.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, on her part, knows that if she can repeat the success story of 2014 — when the Trinamool Congress (TMC) won 34 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state — she could well emerge as one of the top contenders for the Prime Minister’s chair, if a coalition government is formed.
Given how votes in West Bengal are not sought but snatched through the use of violence, which starts from the intimidation of candidates from rival parties, the BJP may not find it easy to realise its dreams of reaching a double-digit seat tally. The party won just two seats in the state in 2014 — the significant part of that victory was, however, the rise in the party’s vote share, which went up from 6 per cent in 2009 to 16 per cent in 2014.
The BJP also managed to emerge on the second spot in the recent panchayat elections that were swept by the TMC.
But the spate of killings and bloodshed that marred the polls remains a blot on India’s democratic traditions.
As many as 52 BJP workers were killed in the recent panchayat elections — the use of violence in this was so high that 34 per seats went uncontested.
The level of intimidation was so phenomenal that the Calcutta High Court permitted filing of nominations through e-mails and WhatsApp. The HC ruling was, however, overturned by the Supreme Court.
While political parties have been raising a hue and cry around the possibility of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) being susceptible to hacking, and thus rigging electoral outcomes, there has been absolute silence on the question of violence being used to decide the outcome of elections.
The use of violence to target political opponents started in 1972 as the Congress reportedly rigged the state polls, leading to the election of chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray and the use of state machinery to physically target the Opposition.
Every West Bengal government has followed from then on.
The Communist parties did it and so did Mamata Banerjee’s TMC. The BJP is new to the game in West Bengal and hence, its party cadres continue to come under attack and find it difficult to pose a tough fight in the democratic process.
The other big worry for the BJP is that the rise is in its vote share in the state is attributable to the fall of the Communist parties — it has so far not shown any signs of being able to make a serious dent in Banerjee's own vote bank.
The physical and verbal intimidation of voters and opposition candidates has in part fuelled the TMC’s rise. If this violence was stopped, the BJP stands a chance at winning big in Bengal.
If the BJP wants to win, it should raise a massive hue and cry about the targeted political violence, so that the impunity with which these killings are being executed is highlighted and stopped. Violence, otherwise, would end up rigging the election on a much larger scale than EVMs possibly ever could.
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