West Bengal: Political history
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Biswa Bangla logo
Abhisikta Ganguly, January 30, 2017: NoiseBreak
Biswa Bangla is an initiative to promote the state’s dying arts and crafts. With brand Biswa Bangla, which as its tagline goes, is where the world meets Bengal, chief minister Mamata Banerjee has taken it forward to: ‘What Bengal does today, India does tomorrow.’Though the depth and reality can be a matter of debate, but a new doubt has been shown up!
Who does Biswa Bangla belong to? This question has started to rise. The normal answer can be, government. There’s no doubt about that Biswa Bangla Marketing Corporation Limited was the brain child of Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee. The logo of Biswa Bangla is being used in every West Bengal government website and advertisement. This is not at all questionable.
But did you know, the applicant person for the trademark of Biswa Bangla is not associated with any post or any level of the government? Even, his name isn’t on the list of the Board of Directors of Biswa Bangla. The organization has no official connection with the applicant person. Even long before the creation of the organization, that person had applied for Biswa Bangla trade mark.
Now you do want to know who he is, don’t you? He is the prince of Trinamool Congress and dearest nephew of Bengal’s ‘didi’, Abhishek Banerjee. His position is immediate after the CM in Trinamool. Mamata Banerjee claimed in Nabbanna press conference that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted to arrest Abhishek. He is the most influential leader of Trinamool. But does he holds a position of the state government? What is his relation with the Biswa Bangla Marketing Corporation Limited?
Information from Register of Companies (ROC) has raised the puzzle. Official information said, the application of Biswa Bangla had come from 30B, Harish Chatterjee Street, Kalighat, Kolkata-700026, from Abhishek Banerjee. The date of the application was 26th November, 2013. A Kolkata firm, C.J. Associates had submitted the application on behalf of Abhishek. Application number was 2633532. Abhishek’s name was given on the place of ‘business name’ in the application form.
Though, Biswa Bangla Marketing Corporation Limited was established on 31st December, 2014. The category of the company said that it’s a governmental organization with registration number-204751. Authorized capital shown of the organization was Rs. 2crore. Though paid up capital was only Rs. 1lakh, which is undoubtedly surprising.
And there’s one more thing. The company didn’t have the records of income and expenditure. The address given for the company was Newtown Rajarhat Action Area-3, Karigari Bhavan, and Plot No. B/7. The present status of Biswa Bangla trademark is abandoned. By Trademark Registration law, if you get a logo on the basis of an application, you have to apply for renewal within 18 months. Practically state government hasn’t submitted any application.
So, questions have started to rise on the transparency of Biswa Bangla logo. There are five members in the Board of Directors of Biswa Bangla, Harshbardhan Neotia (additional director), Rudra Chatterjee (additional director), Subal Chandra Paja (director), Rajib Sinha (director), Mohua Banerjee (director). But none of them have applied for the logo, Abhishek did.
In 2013, he hasn’t became MP of Trinamool Congress, he was related with a Commercial Organization. He then was the dearest nephew only. He made an appeal of the official logo on basis of the relation with CM? Can it really be done at all? If no, then the whole thing is illegal. Any person, who is not associated with the organization can’t apply for trademark.
Government claimed that turnover of Biswa Bangla was 15 crore on the very first year. But why is Abhishek Banerjee the applicant? None of the BOD had given the answer of this question. However, the answer wasn’t given by the nephew, either.
An officer of the Information and Cultural Department said, “I don’t know how this happened but he is the family member of Chief Minister! May be it has happened.”
And more interesting information is after applying for the trademark of Biswa Bangla, application was submitted on 29th June 2015 for Jago Bangla and on 3rd July 2015 for all India Trinamool Congress trademark. The address of the applicant was also the same as Biswa Bangla.
On 30th January 2015, CBI interrogating Mukul Roy at CGO complex, screenplay of Mukul Roy’s so-called distance with Mamata Banerjee, the speed of CBI’s Sarada investigation suddenly became slow, and all those thing happened nearly at the same time. Strange, isn’t it?
Mamata Banerjee created the logo, free
Didi says she created ‘Biswa Bangla’ logo, November 30, 2017: The Times of India
Breaking her silence over the Biswa Bangla logo controversy, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday told the state assembly that she created the logo and gave it free to the government.
She also said the West Bengal government could use the logo as long as it wanted to.
The chief minister’s first comments on the issue came a day after Trinamool Congress MP and her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, filed a defamation case against his former colleague and now BJP leader Mukul Roy saying he would quit politics if the charges that he had applied for ownership of the logo with the approval of his aunt were found true.
“Some people are spreading canards on this issue. The Biswa Bangla logo is my creation. This was my dream and a dream cannot be sold. I gave it to the state government for using it free of cost. The Biswa Bangla brand is our pride,” the chief minister said, without naming Roy.
BJP
2016- Mar 2021
March 27, 2021: The Times of India
From: March 27, 2021: The Times of India
From: March 27, 2021: The Times of India
Bengal, a Left citadel till 2011, is akin to a final frontier for BJP, which has thrown the full might of its formidable election machinery into the state with the promise of a ‘double engine’ government. The saffron party has also taken its social engineering template to Bengal and has been assiduously stitching together a coalition of the marginalised. As a result, a host of castes and communities — like Matuas, Aguris (Ugra Kshatriya), Poundra Kshatriyas, Mahisyas, Bauris, Rajbanshis and Kudmis — have made their way into the political space. Sensing a threat in the seats dominated by these communities, Trinamool has been racing BJP to woo them.
Both parties have kept an eye on the demography while fielding candidates. Mukherjees, Banerjees, Chakravartis, Mitras and Dasguptas, who typically had the major pie, have ceded space to Dalits and OBCs on candidate lists. Aspirations of communities — the machhuaras (fishermen) in South 24-Parganas and Kudmis in Jangalmahal, for instance — have never found as much political representation as they have this time.
Micro-messaging by PM, CM to touch hearts
Modi used a Kudmi greeting from the political dais while addressing a rally in Kharagpur when he said, “Jai Goram” – a powerful personal touch from the Prime Minister not just in a district (West Midnapore) where Kudmis have sizeable presence but also for members of the community in Bankura and Purulia. At Jhargram, home minister Amit Shah promised a Jangalmahal Development Board dedicated to Santhals, Oraons, Mundas and Bhumijs. “We are also looking at bringing the Mahisyas and the Tilis under the OBC category,” Shah said.
Before this, at a meeting in Gosaba (South 24-Parganas), Shah had promised a special annual support to the Jele community (fishermen) along with direct benefit transfers (DBT) of Rs 18,000 to farmers under PM Kisan. “Mamata didi has deprived farmers of Bengal when those in other states have got it (the DBT). The BJP government will transfer the amount to each farmer account without cuts the day it assumes office in Bengal,” Shah said.
Trinamool has been agile in its response. Mamata keeps saying “Jai Johar” at her rallies (a greeting used by Adivasis, mainly of the Kherwal clan). She has also announced a “Jai Johar” state scheme and allocated land for Johar thans (religious places for Santhals). The CM has also been swift off the blocks in setting up development boards for backward communities – Rajbanshis in north Bengal, Lepchas in the Darjeeling hills, Nashya Sheikhs in Dinajpur, who speak the Rajbanshi language but are Muslims who migrated from Bangladesh, and the Matuas concentrated in North 24-Parganas and Nadia.
The new equations after 2019 Lok Sabha vote
BJP has been building on the deep inroads it made in the 2019 Lok Sabha election in which it emerged as the leading party in more than half of Bengal’s 81 reserved constituencies (now 84). From just one seat in the 2016 assembly polls, the saffron party leapfrogged to 46. It came at the cost of the Left, which went down from 12 to a blank, but mostly the Trinamool that won 59 in 2016 but found itself as the leading party in only 34 assembly segments in 2019.
The shift in the voting pattern was significant because Dalits, SC/ST and Muslims have largely stood by the parties in office, Trinamool since 2011, the CPM-led Left Front before that. The aim of BJP’s caste coalition is to splinter Trinamool’s Dalit-Muslim base and woo Dalits and Adivasis. It worked to a large extent in Alipurduar, West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia and Bongaon, the Bangladesh border division in North 24-Parganas, in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. BJP is looking to extend those gains in the assembly polls into south Bengal – to East Burdwan and Kolkata’s two adjoining densely populated suburban districts of North and South 24-Parganas. These three regions are home to a 70% of the state’s scheduled caste population.
Why Rajbanshis & Matuas are important
The race for the Rajbanshi and Matua votes has been a gripping one because Rajbanshis and Namasudras – of whom Matuas are a part – constitute 74% of the SC population in the state. Besides a Development and Cultural Board and Kamtapuri Bhasa Academy for the Rajbanshis, the state government has named Coochbehar University after Rajbanshi icon Panchanan Barma. Mamata also announced setting up of a Narayani battalion in West Bengal Police, which Shah countered by promising to raise a Narayani battalion in the Army.
For the Matuas, other than setting up a board, the Mamata government has undertaken development of the Matua Thakurbari temple and the Thakurnagar railway station in North 24-Parganas. Mamata has also named a new college after Matua gurus Harichand Thakur and Guruchand Thakur. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, BJP trumped Trinamool in the Matua belt, promising citizenship through CAA to refugees, including the Matuas, who migrated from Orakandi in Bangladesh. Modi will be the first PM to visit the seat of Matua religion at Orakandi on Saturday.
Mamata’s counter-attack and the Yogi factor
Mamata has been a vocal opponent of the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act). “Matuas are already citizens. Don’t you have a voter card, a ration card, a land patta? If the people you voted for are citizens, you are also citizens,” the CM said at a Bongaon rally. A Matua member said hundreds of Matuas settled in the Bongaon North assembly constituency don’t have voter cards. “They are harassed when they apply for a passport. They won’t get sarkari jobs unless the Citizenship Act, 2003, is replaced by the CAA,” said the Matua member. BJP has promised to take up the CAA at the first cabinet meeting if it is voted to office in Bengal.
The CM has also been reciting the Chandipath and as well as Saraswati bandanas at her election rallies to counter BJP’s Hindutva narrative. BJP, meanwhile, is losing no opportunity to highlight Mamata’s “changed stance” as a fallout of her “tushtikaran (appeasement)” politics. In polarised regions like Malda and Nandigram, which have a substantial Muslim population, BJP has parachuted in UP CM Yogi Adityanath. “You are greeting me with Jai Shri Ram. But your CM gets angry with the chant. I would like to tell the Bengal CM that you don’t like Ram bhakts but have gathbandhan with jihadis, who are a threat to the country’s security,” Yogi said at a Malda rally.
It’s over to the voters now.
CPM/ Left parties
2016, 2019
From: Saugata Roy, March 28, 2021: The Times of India
See graphic:
CPM/ Left parties in Bengal in 2016, 2019
Conspiracy theories
SWAPAN DASGUPTA, Nov 28, 2021: The Times of India
In normal circumstances, the meeting of the Prime Minister with the chief minister of a state should be considered normal. The message of Mamata Banerjee’s call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week in Delhi — the first after an acrimonious Assembly election in the summer — has, however, transmitted very differently on the ground in West Bengal.
India abounds in conspiracy theories. These are particularly popular in Bengal, beginning from the alleged plot by Mahatma Gandhi and then Jawaharlal Nehru to marginalise Subhas Bose to the alleged discrimination of Bengalis in different spheres of national life. In the realm of politics, the belief that things are not what they appear on the surface but secretly choreographed has a tremendous attraction. The shorthand for these private deals is ‘setting’.
The rage against ‘setting’ is politically consequential. Mamata’s revolt against the Congress and the formation of the Trinamool Congress after 1996 was prompted by the belief that there was a ‘setting’ between the local Congress leadership and the then ruling CPM in the state. The collaborators were colloquially referred to as tarmuj — watermelon: green on the outside and red inside. Certainly, this was an impression the Left loved to nurture since it kept the main opposition in Bengal in a state of permanent confusion. Pranab Mukherjee was a particular target of Trinamool ire as it was felt he had sacrificed the local Congress for the sake of his Lok Sabha seat. The CPM, it was felt, could afford to concede victory to a handful of Congress leaders in Bengal for the sake of a larger game.
In office and after three consecutive election victories, Mamata appears to have learnt a trick or two from her erstwhile Left opponents who ruled Bengal from 1977 to 2011. The punditry in the roadside tea shops, where politics is an abiding passion, is that the chief minister travelled to Delhi to formalise a ‘setting’. By the terms of this alleged arrangement, the Centre will look the other way as the Trinamool in Bengal pulverises the local BJP. In return, Mamata will aggressively pursue her national ambitions, project herself as the alternative to Modi and systematically undermine a disoriented Congress. A section of the disheartened Bengal BJP also believes that as a quid pro quo for weakening the Congress nationally — by stealing its MLAs and leaders in eastern India — Mamata has secured a reprieve for members of her family who are facing investigation for financial irregularities.
Elections and violence
A backgrounder
Shikha Mukerjee, July 8, 2023: The Indian Express
Why is there so much violence in West Bengal, and its follow-up, why cannot governments control and extinguish this violence, is simple: It’s the history, stupid! It is the continuity of tradition, one part of which is physical and murderous violence and the other part of which, paradoxically, is unending disputation by a highly conscious, politically invested population.
Identity politics in West Bengal is split over party allegiance. The landscape is dotted with party flags that proclaim the dominance of one political party over all others in the area. Violence is, at one level, a territorial imperative manifest. The scale and intensity of the conflict fluctuate depending on the challenge to the dominant political force.
In the 1960s, the Congress’s dominance was challenged by the Left and regional parties in an intensification of the confrontations that had built the reputation of West Bengal as a turbulent state. In the 1970s, Congress, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its friends and foes and the Naxalite movement escalated the violence several notches. In the 1980s, the Congress and the CPI(M)-led Left Front were engaged in settling scores through violent confrontations.
In the 1990s, a revival of the Congress produced leaders like Mamata Banerjee and that started off a new era of violence. By 2008, Maoist violence was resurgent and the Trinamool Congress had gained enough strength and substance to take on the CPI(M), in very violent encounters in Nandigram. The new theatres of “operations”, with bombs, guns, squads and ambushes included Khejuri in East Midnapore, Lalgarh in West Midnapore, Singur, Khanakul and more.
The violence has never affected voter enthusiasm and determination to participate in the rites of democratic politics. Through the years of turbulence in West Bengal, voter turnout has been sustained at a high of over 72-75 per cent, though in some elections the peaks have been higher. Despite West Bengal’s reputation for rigging the polls, by “scientific” manipulation of voters lists and booth management or outright capture, there is no dispute that people turn out in very large numbers to cast their ballot.
It has been argued that these turnouts are organised by an army of enforcers, that is, threats and intimidation. What is beyond dispute is that political parties, especially the ruling party and the emerging alternative or principal challenger, have the remarkable organisational capability to man the polling stations, and the voters and get the mandate.
“Central forces,” “central observers,” stern directives by successive election commissioners, at the central and state level, independent watchdogs, media presence, angry voters, rich and resourceful political parties with wizard campaign managers — none have successfully created a strategy to curb violence in all its variety. The legendary election commissioner T N Seshan did ensure free, fair and, above all, peaceful polls in West Bengal in the 1990s, but that did not impair CPI(M)’s domination over territory and its capacity to contain the opposition.
The expectation was that the 2023 panchayat elections would be a tough challenge. The expectations are turning out to be accurate. In the normal course, it is the ruling party that is challenged, which means the Trinamool Congress. This time, the challenge is, it appears, for the parties in Opposition, starting with the Bharatiya Janata Party as the leading party, the CPI(M) which seems more confident and organised than before, the Congress which is engaged in defending its turf in specific districts and the newly hatched Indian Secular Front.
The panchayat election, which will decide the fate of some 73,000 panchayat representatives, comprising 928 zilla parishad members in 22 districts, 9,730 Panchayat Samiti members, and 63,229 Gram Panchayat members, requires that political parties in the contest get their acts together for that one day.
The violence that was anticipated during the nomination filing period has happened. Bombs, guns, pipes, cricket stumps, lathis, bamboo sticks and a variety of deadly implements have been used to threaten and prevent candidates from filing their nominations. Teams of Trinamool Congress loyalists, including one Bashir Molla found with a gun, have attempted to block other parties from filing their nominations in Murshidabad, North 24 Parganas, Birbhum, East Midnapore and pretty much every district in the state. The Opposition too has retaliated with substantial firepower and manpower. The Calcutta High Court has intervened and ordered the State Election Commission to requisition central forces and CCTV cameras to contain the violence and possible booth attacks on voting day.
The ongoing process of filing nominations and the violence that invariably occurs during this crucial time is one chapter of the expected pre-poll violence. By day’s end on Tuesday, about 93,425 panchayat nominations had been filed. Of this, the BJP had filed 37,565 nominations, the CPI M 30,249 nominations and the Trinamool Congress and the Congress a few thousand each.
Till the Trinamool Congress gets down to filing nominations for all the seats in the panchayat elections, the violence – bombs hurled, clashes with bamboo poles, sticks and stumps and other deadly implements — will remain between the parties opposing each other in the local areas. This would include clashes between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP, the CPI(M), the Congress and ISF and between some of these opposition parties vying for area domination.
When the Trinamool Congress begins filing nominations, there will be clashes, bloody and intimidating, between rival claimants to panchayat seats. West Bengal had a sneak peek of the levels of intra-party violence when Abhishek Banerjee organised the US-style primaries, to put together a list of nominees approved by the local party and voters during his Nabo Jowar (New Tide) outreach. It is unlikely that the party will organise cold bottled water, roses and cups of tea for intraparty rivals on the lines of the welcome it organised for opposition candidates arriving in BDO offices in Asansol in West Bardhaman district or in Birbhum district.
It remains to be seen how many seats are won uncontested in the 2023 panchayat elections. In 2018, the Trinamool Congress won about 34 per cent of the seats without contest. Whether this was a consequence of violence and perceptions of threat or outright fear of the Trinamool Congress or it was a result of weak opposition parties not having the organisational capability or the manpower to field 20,000 plus candidates is open to debate.
It is not in the Trinamool Congress’s interest to encourage its unruly army of supporters to use violence against the Opposition in this panchayat election. The party and the government of Mamata Banerjee are fully engaged in damage control operations on account of the visuals of mountains of cash confirming the pervasive corruption in the teacher recruitment scandal, the illegal coal mining scandal and the illegal transborder cattle trade. It is also up against anti-incumbency having ruled the panchayats for over 15 years.
The uncertainty of its control over party supporters is evident in its tactics of sending out teams of ministers and senior party leaders, with thousands of party symbols issued against the approved official list of candidates. The party has a record of symbols being snatched and clashes over claims by rival candidates.
And all this is just the beginning phase of the 2023 panchayat election.
Governor- State government relations
2024: Governor wants the dismissal of the Education Minister
April 5, 2024: The Times of India
Bengal governor C V Ananda Bose “directed” the state govt Thursday to sack minister Bratya Basu, prompting the latter to say it was the constitutional prerogative of the CM and he had “exceeded his brief”. Bose, chancellor of state varsities, flagged a “political meeting held in Gour Banga University” in Basu’s presence.
2024/ Speaker swears in 2 MLAs, Governor alleges ‘Constitutional breach
July 6, 2024: The Times of India
Kolkata : Bengal assembly speaker Biman Banerjee on Friday administered oath of office to newly elected MLAs Sayantika Banerjee and Reyat Hossain Sarkar, prompting governor C V Ananda Bose to complain to PrezDroupadi Murmu alleging “constitutional impropriety”. Speaker Banerjee, however, said he had “adhered to rules”, reports Debashis Konar.
On Thursday, Bose had authorised deputy speaker Asish Banerjee to swear in two MLAs under Article 188 of the Constitution.
On Friday, before the assembly convened for a special session, the business advisory committee decided that the speaker should administer oath to the MLAs. When the session began at 2pm, speaker Banerjee said his office had received an email at 9.22pm on Thursday from the governor’s officer, in which Bose had appointed the deputy speaker to administer the oath.
The deputy speaker, however, refused to do so. “The speaker is present in the House. In his presence, I cannot be blind to norms (and administer oath). This will be disrespectful and demeaning to the chair,” he said, urging the speaker to administer the oath, who did it immediately.
State parliamentary affairs minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay said rule 5 of chapter II of Rules and Procedure of Conduct of Business in the assembly stated that an “MLA who has not taken oath in pursuance of Article 188 may do so at the commencement of a sitting of the House, or at any other time of the sitting of the House, as the Speaker may direct”. No law had been violated, Chattopadhyay asserted. The governor, however, differed. Citing Article 188, which says MLAs should take their oath either from the governor or any person appointed by the governor, Bose alleged: “This constitutional transgression has been done in spite of the governor appointing deputy speaker as the person before whom the two newly elected MLAs shall take oath.”
The Left, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
1977-2021
Armaan Bhatnagar, May 18, 2021: The Times of India
From: Armaan Bhatnagar, May 18, 2021: The Times of India
From: Armaan Bhatnagar, May 18, 2021: The Times of India
Lead image: Reuters
This means that for the first time in the history of post-Independence Bengal, the Left Front – which is dominated by the CPM and has Forward Bloc, Revolutionary Socialist Party, Communist Party of India and Marxist Forward Bloc as its constituents – will have no voice in the state assembly.
The vote share of the CPM has shrunk to an all-time low of 4.7% in 2021 from 19.7% in 2016. This is less than one-tenth of Trinamool Congress’s (TMC’s) vote share of 47.9%. Collectively, the Left Front managed to bag just 5.7% of the total votes.
Leading Left ideologue Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation says the debacle in 2021 seems more pronounced considering the Left was in power in the state for 34 years.
He was referring to the uninterrupted Left rule in Bengal from 1977 to 2011, which saw the longest-serving communist government in any Indian state so far. Certainly, in this context, the pitiful drubbing of the Left does evoke a sense of disbelief.
How can a party that was so deeply entrenched in the state manage to vaporise in such a short span of time? But the Left's downfall is not just a story of a single election. The CPM did hit its nadir in 2021 but its undoing began years ago, much before even Mamata Banerjee emerged as a powerful force.
Domination to decimation
To understand the reasons behind the Left's fading electoral and ideological footprint in West Bengal, we need to trace our journey back to the beginning of its rule in the 1970s. From supporting land reforms to leading food movements in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s in Bengal, the CPM-led Left had become the voice of the people's revolution and built strong moral capital long before coming to power.
This culminated in a landslide victory in the 1977 assembly elections under the charismatic leadership of Jyoti Basu. Congress, the dominant party till then, was pushed to the sidelines and relegated to a weakened role of an opposition.
Meanwhile, the CPM continued to work for the poor and tribals and rolled out the much-celebrated Operation Barga — the highly successful land distribution and tenancy reform policy.
Simultaneously, it strengthened itself in the rural pockets with the establishment of the three-tier panchayat system. This helped the CPM build a strong organisational presence at the grassroots level and opened a gateway into the everyday lives of the people.
Every form of interaction in the rural areas was channelled through this organisational structure nurtured by the party. So much so that it turned into a breeding ground for powerful local leaders, who helped mobilise support during elections.
But with rising unemployment and lack of industrial growth towards the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s, the tide started turning against the CPM government.
The turning point came in the early 1990s when it was forced to join the bandwagon of competitive federalism during the liberalisation era.
Blinkered vision "The Left – which was historically opposed to the economic reforms – felt entrapped as it imagined that it had no choice but to compete with other states during the post-liberalisation era," says Dwaipayan Bhattacharya, professor of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and acclaimed author of 'Government as Practice: Democratic Left in a Transforming India'.
The CPM-ruled Bengal was forced to undergo a major policy transition during this period and the Left government started courting private investment while pushing for major industrial reforms.
Suman Nath, assistant professor in the anthropology department at Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Government College in Kolkata and author of a book on everyday politics in West Bengal, says that the CPM started changing its tactics during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It was worried about the negative perception building among the people spurred by the lack of jobs and industrialisation in the state. "When Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee came to power [in 2000], he was a man in a hurry. He wanted to keep up with the neo-liberal policies," Nath says.
This rushed and uncritical adoption of industrialisation invariably aided the opportunists in the opposition parties, who eventually emerged as the heroes of civil society movements of Nandigram and Singur.
Rahul Verma, a fellow at Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research, believes that the anti-land acquisition movements of Nandigram and Singur during 2006-07 led to a seismic shift in Bengal.
The movements helped Mamata Banerjee, then a rising star, gain a groundswell of support in rural pockets that the Left once dominated. As a result, the Left's seat share was reduced by over a half in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and nearly one-fourth in the 2011 assembly elections.
"Electoral dominance brings some sort of hubris where you fail to see the contradictions built up in the system. This was seen during the Nandigram and Singur movements, which led to a massive anti-Left mobilisation in West Bengal," Verma says.
Hubris and the cabal within Dwaipayan Bhattacharya says that the Left's lack of connection with voters on the ground during these movements resulted in a switch in perception in the state.
However, the blunders of Nandigram and Singur incidents alone weren't responsible for the Left's downfall. Political observers also blame its ubiquitous style of functioning and lack of proportional representation. Centre for Policy Research’s Verma says that CPM was always viewed as a party that wasn't just ruling the state at the top but interfering in every aspect of the local life in Bengal.
"The party was so deeply ingrained in the society that its grassroots-level leaders were involved in all spheres of life — from marriage to jobs to local elections," he says.
This, Verma says, may have slowly built an undercurrent of resentment against the then CPM-led Left Front government.
Ujal Mookherjee, a Kolkata-based research scholar who politically identifies himself as a Leftist, says that people started to feel suffocated by the misuse of the deeply rooted structures by local party cadres. This organisational structure meant that everybody was under the radar of the local party leaders and would be kept out of government schemes if they supported anybody else.
Academic Nath says that there was a realisation among the people that if they weren't part of this Left regime, they would not get benefits from any government schemes.
"People started disliking this type of politics," he says. Moreover, the lack of mass-based representation in the Left ranks also had a deep electoral impact in the long run.
Unlike Kerala, where several other backward classes (OBC) leaders rose up the ranks in the CPM – chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan being a prime example – the Left's rank and file in Bengal hardly included a strong Dalit or tribal face.
Economist and political activist Prasenjit Bose says that the CPM failed to address this problem and it led to a severe under-representation of Dalits, adivasis, Muslims and women at the decision-making level of the leadership.
Deluded efforts After losing power in 2011, the CPM contributed to its own failure in emerging as a strong opposition force that could have dislodged the TMC.
There was never a proper review of what went wrong after the anti-land acquisition movements of Nandigram and Singur, says Bose. Observers feel that the CPM was stung by a sense of disbelief after it lost power in Bengal and failed to assume the role of an effective opposition party.
Bose says that CPM continued to believe and propagate that the events leading up to its downfall in the state were simply a result of an opposition conspiracy.
"Neither was anybody held accountable for its errors nor was any rectification attempted," he says.
CPI (ML)'s Dipankar Bhattacharya says that once out of power, the challenge before the CPM – and the wider Left Front – was to reinvent itself as a principal opposition party.
But the CPM in Bengal thought of itself as a natural ruler due to its long and continuous reign. This hubris was absent in the Kerala unit, where power alternated between the Left and Congress.
"Rather than reinventing themselves as an opposition party, they continued to stay in 'government-in-waiting' mode. That mindset has proved to be extremely costly," adds Bhattacharya.
The dismissive attitude of the Left towards the public mandate laid the groundwork for TMC's consolidation and helped Mamata Banerjee as she went after its support base.
"After losing its grip on Bengal in 2011, the CPM did not work enough on its ground game. On the other hand, in her desire to decimate the Left, Mamata undertook a relentless campaign to woo its rural and Muslim support base," says Rahul Verma.
Getting the moves wrong Recently Kolkata-based newspaper The Telegraph quoted some CPM leaders as saying that the party's biggest mistake had been its desperate and deluded efforts to return to power by any means rather than admit the errors of the last few years of Left rule.
Thus, in the 2016 assembly elections, the CPM formed an alliance with the Congress in what appeared to be a futile effort to return to power. "They thought alliance was a way to come back to power," says economist Prasenjit Bose.
Moreover, the CPM failed to read the pulse of the voters in 2016 and launched an anti-corruption campaign against Mamata which did not strike a chord with the voters.
Consequently, the Congress became the primary opposition party in the state and the CPM slipped to the third spot. Since the Congress was not in a position to consolidate and challenge the TMC, some of the Left cadres got frustrated and eventually turned to the BJP.
The panchayat polls of 2018 and the widespread violence leading to it was yet another nail in the Left’s coffin.
Nearly one-third of all the seats were won by Mamata's party unopposed and the Left cadres claimed they were targeted by the marauding TMC mobs.
The Left's failure to protect its ground-level workers compelled many of them to flock to the BJP for protection.
Thus, the BJP became the default beneficiary of Mamata's desire to decimate the Left, says Verma of Centre for Policy Research.
Time for reinvention? In 2021 too, the CPM failed to learn from its past mistakes and again formed an alliance with the Congress. Only this time, the partnership also included a strange bedfellow in Abbas Siddiqui's Indian Secular Front (ISF). The outfit is perceived as communal.
Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Government College’s Nath suggests that while some people were looking for an alternative to the identity-based politics of the BJP and TMC, the CPM's alliance with ISF did more harm than good.
The party committed another blunder by equating the TMC with the BJP, further alienating the traditional Left base.
The voters rejected their campaign against a fictitious entity called "BJmool" (a hybrid of BJP and Trinamool), says Dipankar Bhattacharya. In the end, the CPM and its fellow leftists failed to capture a single seat in the assembly and was reduced to an all-time low.
Does this signal the end of the road?
In a state where progressive Left politics has thrived for many years, the collapse of the CPM raises questions about the long-term future of the Left itself.
Many political observers, as well as supporters, feel that CPM cannot continue in its present shape or form and might have to completely reinvent itself if it hopes for a revival.
Nilanjana Gupta, professor of English at Jadavpur University, is banking on Bengal's strong tradition of Left politics but does not think the CPM is necessarily the party that will bring the Leftist forces together.
She adds there is a possibility for some other manifestation of the Left in the state.
CPI (ML)’s Dipankar Bhattacharya feels the only way out for the Left is to play an active role outside the assembly by working on the ground and raising the voice of the people.
Meanwhile, Nath describes CPM as a "company that has completely lost its goodwill" and sees no future for the party unless it undergoes a complete transformation — even a change of name.
Shackled to tradition Younger voters too feel disgruntled with the way the CPM has been functioning, with some saying they feel an ideological disconnect with the party.
Md Zafar Sadique, a Kolkata-based law student, says that CPM did not do much groundwork in 2021 and formed hasty coalitions in a desperate bid to win votes.
"There was no grassroots connect. The campaigning reflected that the whole aim was to grab votes and it did little to show voters what they stand for," he says.
Two traditional Left voters, who voted for Trinamool this year, expressed indignation over the Left not standing up to the BJP and "implicitly" allowing the saffron party to make inroads in Bengal.
"The 'Ekushe Ram, Chhabbishe Baam' [Ram in 2021, Left in 2026] slogan was doing the rounds and the CPM leadership never clarified its stance. They never came out and said how stupid this idea was," said one.
Research scholar Ujal Mookherjee feels that the Left's patriarchal mindset and lack of female representation are also a problem. "The CPM lacks a female face. The organisation comes across as very patriarchal to the common public. There's a big disconnect," he says. The sentiment was echoed by a Kolkata-based law professor, who believes the old guard now needs to make space for the younger generation.
Avik Nath Chowdhury, a content writer based in Kolkata, says that while the CPM did well to project young faces this time, it erred in announcing them very late. "We hardly knew anything about them or what they had been doing," he says.
Some Left-leaning voters, however, do believe that the 2021 election is not the end of the Left in Bengal and the CPM, or some other Leftist party, can regain relevance in the state.
But for that the denizens of Kolkata’s Alimuddin Street – CPM’s state headquarters – have to start looking within. For too long the party (and its allies) has held on to an ideology that is well past its sell-by date. It’s high time the party cleaned its Augean stables.
North Bengal: statehood demand
A backgrounder, as in 2021 June
Saugata Roy, June 23, 2021: The Times of India
KOLKATA: Two BJP MPs from north Bengal and a BJP MLA from Dabgram-Fulbari adjacent to Siliguri have raised the demand for making north Bengal a separate state. With the list increasing by the day despite BJP distancing from such a stance, the apparent dichotomy has sparked intense speculation.
Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh stretched himself to make the “poles” meet. “There is no denying that north Bengal and other regions such as Jangalmahal have been deprived by successive governments since Independence. People here have witnessed little development while most of the development work has been in and around Kolkata,” said Ghosh.
A look at recent posts by mostly pro-BJP people from north Bengal spread over Darjeeling, Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Uttar Dinajpur, Dakshin Dinajpur and Malda indicate that the demand has to do more with identity politics than development. Most of these people want to get rid of the Kolkata “hegemony”. One such post, by Prerana Mitra, made the demand immediately after the Bengal assembly poll results that threw up a political contrast between north Bengal and south Bengal.
Demands for Gorkhaland state, Kamtapur state and Greater Cooch Behar are nothing new in north Bengal, indicating socio-ethnic and political forces at play. But the difference this time is that a section of north Bengal “bhadraloks” — school teachers and college teachers — has started arguing for a separate state citing the logic behind delimitation of constituencies.
The demand has also found support among the educated Rajbanshis who comprise a near-majority population in north Bengal. The aspirations of the educated class have shaped up this sentiment. They are now aiming at a new identity combination moving past the old Koch-Rajbanshi consolidation by roping in Rajbanshis, Namasudras, Paliyas and Adivasis mainly working in farmlands and tea gardens. The BJP is ahead of Trinamool among these sections as was evident from the assembly polls.
The initiative has prompted hectic parleys between social organisations and political parties, prompting Koch icon Ananta Rai — the self-proclaimed maharaja of Cooch Behar — to return to his palace at Chakchaka. Union home minister Amit Shah broke bread with Ananta before coming to Cooch Behar for poll campaign. Though the state government had banished the “maharaja” from Cooch Behar, Ananta made his presence felt along with his supporters by waving yellow flags at Shah’s rally.
Trinamool banked on the other leader of the Greater Cooch Behar movement, Bangsi Badan Barman, during the polls.
BJP played the same tactic in the Hills for years together and had won the MP seats and now all the three assembly seats. The party played to the sentiments of the Hills people for Gorkhaland, but didn’t officially endorse the demand.
BJP leaders are aware that supporting the demand for making north Bengal a separate state would be a disaster for the party in south Bengal. BJP MPs and MLAs are thus voicing the “popular sentiment” before some other forces take advantage of the sentiment. Such efforts can play havoc in this geo-politically sensitive region, given the boundaries north Bengal shares with other countries.
Trinamool and CPM organizers in north Bengal fear that the BJP is inviting trouble in the region to make a case for central intervention. “We will fight the demand for a separate state to the last. It is a nefarious design by BJP to put north Bengal into utter chaos,” said former Trinamool MLA Udayan Guha.
Political songs, jingles, slogans
As in 2021
Priyanka Dasgupta, April 19, 2021: The Times of India
On the sidelines of Bengal's barb-strewn poll battlefield, a thousand songs have bloomed, pitting ideology against invective, sarcasm against slurs, the puerile against the profound, and those supposedly neutral versus the party faithful.
Election season in a state where creativity is always looking for the next outlet means there will be a jingle to match every political motive. What's different this election is that production has almost entirely shifted from the hands of paid professionals to amateurs armed with nothing other than a smartphone and a fresh spin on politics.
Quite a few of the more popular poll songs and jingles have been sung by previously unheard-of voices. The videos – smart or silly – are also mostly the handiwork of those who claim to be in it for their ideology rather than financial gain.
In 2016, singer-songwriter Anupam Roy had written and composed TMC’s "Paanch bochore bodle geche banglar mukh (the face of Bengal has changed in the last five years)". The two-minute video highlighting the work done by the Mamata Banerjee government in its first five years was directed by Bangla band Chandrabindoo's frontman-turned-filmmaker Anindya Chattopadhyay. Both artistes maintain it was a paid assignment.
Cut to 2021, neither Anupam nor Anindya has been associated with a single such assignment for any political party. They along with Tollywood celebs Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Anirban Bhattacharya, Kaushik Sen, Santilal Mukherjee, Riddhi Sen, Piya Chakraborty, Rwitobroto Mukherjee, Rudraprasad Sengupta, Arun Mukhopadhyay, Sabyasachi Chakrabarty, Suman Mukhopadhyay and Surangana Bandyopadhyay were instead involved in the making of their version of a say-no-to-fascism song called "Nijeder motey nijeder gaan". The video, featuring several other celebrities, went viral within hours of its release.
Anupam does not want to call this a poll jingle. "This song was supposed to release a year ago during the anti-NRC-CAA movement. It is a coincidence that our song released during the 2021 elections," he said.
Though he doesn’t quite like most of the poll jingles out this year, Anupam acknowledges the popularity of Debangshu Bhattacharya’s "Khela hobe (game's on)" song for TMC to go with Mamata Banerjee's primary slogan. Debangshu, the general secretary of Trinamool Youth Congress, is not a familiar name in Tollywood’s music studios. But his song, which was remixed by DJ Bulbul, has become a sensation. "I consciously avoided poetic language. I emphasised on simple lyrics that have a mass connect," Debangshu said, adding that his original inspiration was a Tagore poem and a speech by Mamata against the new farm laws.
"I felt TMC needed a slogan that could counter ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Without having any overt political connection, 'Khela hobe' suggests the presence of TMC. When I wrote the song, I didn’t know that the two words were earlier used in a political speech by Bangladesh politician Shamim Osman. However, he never used it as a slogan," said the 24-year-old civil engineer, who joined TMC in 2019.
On January 6, Debangshu wrote the lyrics of the song, recorded the audio on his phone and shot the video in front of Coochbehar ABN Seal College. A day later, he shared it on his Facebook page. The video went viral instantly, garnering 40 lakh views. The first four lines of "Khela hobe" talk about "baire theke borgi (outsiders)" coming to Bengal every month. It goes on to iterate that Bengal won't change – "Amar mati soibe na/UP-Bihar hoibe na/Bangla amar Bangla robe".
TMC’s Asansol South candidate Saayoni Ghosh describes "Khela hobe" as an "anthem" that reflects the spirit of the people of Bengal. She believes the song itself has come a "long way" since it hit social media. "I have heard it being played inside a Merc in Kolkata as well as a toto in Asansol. The song appeals to all age groups. The lyrics are very Bengali while the tune is catchy and modern. It can be sung easily. Besides, ‘khela hobe’ is a term which everyone in Bengal can easily relate to."
In the case of "Nijeder motey nijeder gaan", the one line that has resonated with many is, "Aami onnyo kothao jabona ei deshetei thakbo (I am not going anywhere. I will reside in my motherland)." Actor Rwitobroto Mukherjee, who has co-directed the video with Riddhi, said, "For a section of people who receive news a little later, the party at the Centre has successfully created a narrative where the word ‘intellectual’ has now become slang. They have made India seem like their father’s property. They are commanding when I will come and leave this country. But that can’t happen. I don’t exist because of their permission."
That’s why another line from the song – "tumi sob dhoroner onko Pakistan diye gun korechho (All your explanations begin and end with Pakistan) – has struck a chord with many. "I have reservations about this idea of being banished to other countries, most importantly Pakistan, at the drop of a hat. My point is that I will go there on my own terms, not on their orders," Rwitobroto said.
PARODY VS ORIGINAL
Twenty-two-year-old Nilabja Niyogi, who graduated in Bengali from Presidency University, is a Left supporter. Apart from singing the viral "Tumpa Brigade chol", he has also lent his voice to "Haal pherao laal pherao", which is a parody of the "Lungi dance" song. That apart, Niyogi has sung the poll parodies of "Uri uri baba" and "Tunir Maa" for the Left Front. "We have composed five original songs and five parodies. The advantage of using parodies for polls is the easy connect of an already popular number. The idea was to parody popular numbers to reach out to the young generation. Interestingly, even seniors have loved and shared these songs. Rahul Pal’s lyrics of the parodies are not poetic. Rather, they are consciously colloquial and speak the language of those the Communist party has been talking about," he said.
Left inclined Soumik Das, whose songs like ‘Hobu Master’, ‘Magojdholai’, ‘Brigade’ and ‘Vote Nodi’ have gone viral, has made one-shot videos shot in his own studio for this election BJP, too, has relied on parody. The party released a short, animated video called "Pishi jao" – a spin-off from the Italian protest song "Bella Ciao" that had been the staple of every Leftist student union's protest in Bengal for years and was recently recreated for the Netflix series Money Heist. Bhowanipore’s BJP candidate Rudranil Ghosh calls it his "favourite" poll jingle.
Actor-turned-BJP functionary Rupa Bhattacharya is part of a new BJP poll jingle titled "Boro jotno kore mithye bole bikrito kore itihas" along with Ghosh and MP Babul Supriyo, who is contesting the Tollygunge seat. "I have known the director of the video for years. He asked me to come to the studio and record two lines. I agreed. No remuneration was involved. I am part of BJP. Since this song was commissioned by my party, I thought it was my duty to be a part of it. This is my labour of commitment," she said.
Then there is 32-year-old Jadavpur University alumnus Anamitra Roy, a writer-filmmaker who shot to fame with his parody of Jingle Bells that took a dig at BJP state president Dilip Ghosh. "We are politically conscious without being aligned with any party. When the anti-NRC protests were going on, (musician) Saikat Bandopadhyay and I came out with parody of Jingle Bells," he said.
On February 1, Anamitra and his team released a video parody of Raj Kapoor’s "Jeena yahan marna yahan’, targeting PM Narendra Modi. More recently, they released a video titled "Haridasi", an original on "love jihad" and the alleged hate campaign in Bengal. Left-inclined Soumik Das, who did his Phd in computer engineering from Jadavpur University, first shared the video of his political satire titled "Jananeta" in March. “I used to write political essays and skits, but wanted to reach out to the masses through songs since people don’t read that much. I use colloquial language that speak about the issues people must know before casting their votes. I have 20 years of work in independent music. All my videos are self-made. They are one-shot videos shot in my own studio,” said the 38-year-old, whose songs "Magojdholai", "Brigade" and "Vote Nodi" have gone viral.
WOOING NEW VOTERS
Another interesting departure is the way parties have moved beyond their known territories to woo new voters by choosing lyrics and parodies of songs that are a far cry from the tunes they were associated with. Soon after BJP released "Pishi jao", the Left took a leap of faith from the banal "Tomar naam aamar naam Vietnam" of 60s vintage to appropriating the popular "Tumpa Sona" for Nilabja’s Brigade song. The experiment evoked mixed reactions, but Nilabja doesn’t buy the argument that parody doesn’t suit the Left. "Why should there be a situation of one song replacing another? We can have both Salil Chowdhury and my parody playing. Let people choose what they want," he said. According to film-maker Kamaleshwar Mukherjee, there is no harm in reaching out to new voters. "Every political party will have an idea of the target audience. At the cocktail parties of pseudo intellectuals in Kolkata, they initially hum Harry Belafonte numbers and dance to Yo Yo Honey Singh at the end. Instead of debating with them and discussing their reservations, I would say that the true assessment of an art form takes long. I am happy that the lingo of jingles has changed this election. I am also so happy that this election has seen a lot of poll jingles being released," he said.
"Populism plays an important role in communication. I have directed ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’ and ‘Chander Pahar’. My peer circle likes the former. In that circle, 80% have loved it without believing in the philosophy of Ritwik Ghatak. If I go outside my peer circle, I am known as the director of ‘Chander Pahar’. It’s the same with ‘Toke niye brigade jabo Tumpa’. That’s become the most popular and I have no problems accepting it," he said.
Rudranil is satisfied with the benchmark that BJP’s "Bella Ciao" parody has set. According to him, the Left has forever tried to act as a "guardian of Bengal’s culture without truly doing anything for art and artistes". "The Leftists talk about fascism but are intolerant enough to drop a theatre actor from a play after he joins BJP. They made everyone believe that ‘Bella Ciao’ belongs only to them. By using a parody of the ‘Bella Ciao’ and replacing the original lyrics with the words ‘Pishi jao’, BJP has also creatively hit back at both the Left and the TMC," he said.
The debate over which among the many innovative poll jingles created the most traction this election could well continue long after the winner in the battle for Bengal is declared.
Political violence
2018-2021 Feb
Bharti Jain, March 4, 2021: The Times of India
A home ministry report with exhaustive data on political violence in West Bengal citing 693 incidents and 11 deaths during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, and 23 deaths on polling day and the preceding night in the 2018 panchayat elections, helped the Election Commission decide on an unprecedented eight-phase assembly polls in the state.
Even after the parliamentary polls, between June 1 and December 31, 2019, as many 852 incidents of political violence were reported, in which 61 people, including 35 from Trinamool and 20 from BJP, died and 1,508 were injured (800 BJP and 584 Trinamool), the report said.
The home ministry put the total incidents in West Bengal during 2020 at 663, in which 57 people, including 27 from BJP and 25 from Trinamool Congress, were killed and 1,314 injured, including 706 from BJP and 527 from Trinamool. Also, between January 1 and 7, MHA reported 23 clashes, in which one worker each of BJP and Trinamool were killed and 43 people were injured.
Sources said the MHA report dated January 9 served as a key input for the EC in gauging the risk of political violence during the assembly elections and accordingly assessing the requirement of central forces and other security measures in West Bengal. During the panchayat elections in May 2018, the MHA report said no polling was held for 203 zila parishad seats, 3,059 panchayat samiti seats and 16,814 gram panchayat seats, as the “opposition could not field candidates”.
It added that 23 people died in incidents of political violence in the night before and on polling day.
Most incidents during the panchayat polls were in districts where BJP has made inroads, the report said, adding that “violence in these areas was aimed to prevent BJP from deploying its polling agents and restricting voter turnout at the polling booths”.
Among the notable incidents mentioned in the MHA report were pelting of stones on BJP president J P Nadda’s convoy (December 2020), attack on Union minister Babul Supriyo at Jadavpur University (September 2019), killing of three BJP workers in firing (June 2019) and the mob attack on Babul Supriyo’s convoy(May 2019).
Poor relations between TMC and governor
Governors’ powers trimmed, direct access to universities cut
The West Bengal government notified new rules governing the interaction between the chancellor’s (or governor’s) office and vice-chancellors. The chancellor cannot intervene in the day-today affairs of universities, nor can he advise university officials directly, the new rules state. All communication between the chancellor and senior university officials will also have to be routed through the state higher education department.
Tuesday’s gazette notification — putting the state government between the chancellor’s office and vice-chancellors — caps three months of back and forth between Raj Bhavan and the Bengal government, starting with governor Jagdeep Dhankhar’s visit to the Jadavpur University campus to “rescue” Union minister of state Babul Supriyo from student protesters. It comes a week after governor Jagdeep Dhankhar’s Calcutta University visit, when he expressed his “dismay” over the no-show by the university vice-chancellor, registrar and other senior officials.
State education minister Partha Chatterjee insisted there was no move to “curb the governor’s power”. “Please do not mistake conventions for rules.” Dhankhar himself did not respond to queries from TOI on the changes.
The new “rules” that the minister spoke about became effective from Tuesday with the state government notifying them under the West Bengal University & College (Administration & Regulation) Act two years after the law was promulgated in 2017. They do not leave any room for the chancellor’s direct intervention in university affairs; the chancellor may write to the government or seek clarification on university matters but cannot advise university officials on his own. The rules under Section 5(9) of the act also specify that all applications for leave by vice-chancellors and pro-vice-chancellors should now be made to the higher education department.
All proposals for conferring D.Litt and D.Sc degrees during university convocations will now have to be sent to the state government for concurrence; the government will then send these lists to the chancellor for “confirmation”. The chancellor may preside over meetings of the university’s highest policy-making bodies (court or senate) but he would not have any power to amend the list of awardees once the state government puts a stamp on the university’s proposals, officials said.
State university officials now are also under no compulsion to take direct orders from the chancellor over the daily running of the universities. They would be accountable to the government.
V-Cs are also under no obligation to call court or senate meetings in consultation with the chancellor; they will, instead, have to intimate the education department.
TMC protests against governor in RS too
Trinamool Congress members shouted slogans against the West Bengal governor and walked out of Rajya Sabha after the party was not allowed to raise an issue, drawing the ire of Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu who said Parliament's image was “going down” due to such conduct. The ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal has been accusing Governor Jagdeep Dhankar of delaying clearance to the bill concerning the formation of SC and ST Commission in West Bengal and other legislations. The issue was also raised by TMC MP Saugata Roy in Lok Sabha during the debate on the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty Sixth Amendment) Bill, 2019 related to extending the quota for Scheduled Castes and and Scheduled Tribes in legislatures for 10 years. PTI
Religion and politics
Sri Ram in the politics and society of Bengal
Saugata Roy, ANALYSIS - BJP and the rise of Lord Ram in Bengal , May 8, 2017: The Times of India
Lord Ram was never a historical figure in Bengal as people believe in parts of north India. Perceptions vary in Uttar Pradesh and Bengal on this issue. For people in east UP, mostly avid readers of Ramcharitmanas by Tulsidas, Ram is as real as the sun, but it's not so in Bengal. In fact, Tagore wrote “Kobi tobo monobhumi Ramer janmasthan, Ayodhyar cheye satya jeno (the poet's mind is the birthplace of Ram which is more real than Ayodhya).“
Yet, the spurt in celebra tion of Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti in parts of Bengal, including Tagore's land Birbhum, has caught eyeballs, pointing to a shift in the state's socio-political narrative.Speakers at the rallies use the occasion to assert their Hindu identity, although at the grassroots, the deprived lot look at Ram as the icon against “injustice and terror“ by the ruling Trinamool Congress.
If you discount this as a “passing phase“ of saffron euphoria after UP polls, think again. For, it appears to be a building up of a new narrative in which Hinduism stands for patriotism and secularism means Muslim appeasement. Unlike in 1992, when Kolka ta saw a surge in Hindu passions after the Babri Masjid demolition, the VHP's rallying for Ram Janmabhoomi this time got some a social sanction. It touched the minds of a section of the educated middle class that's either irritated with, or insecure about, the rise of jihadi Islam.
Knee-jerk reactions to the saffron brigade from the Trinamool are adding to polarisation. A change in Bengali word `Ramdhanu' (rainbow) by the government in school books is one such instance. Environment lessons in Bengali in government approved textbooks for Class III have changed the word `ramdhanu' to `rongdhonu' to get rid of Ram.
If this is one facet, the other move is just the reverse. The recent South Contai assembly bypoll is a case in point, in which the BJP emerged as a clear second -far ahead of the Left and Congress that lost their deposits. The BJP's gain has a direct correlation with the vote shift from the Left. The Lok Sabha bypoll in Coochbehar held in 2016 showed similar trend.
The Left seems to be caught in a time warp, failing to rally people under its broad class politics paradigm. Also, the Left's inability to inspire youth has added to their woes.
“We've seen others, Congress, CPM and Trinamool.Let's see what Modiji can do,“ said IT manager Saikat Mitra.Modi has a package for every one -Ram Navami for the insecure middle-aged bhadralok, and development for the youth. The Mamata government has, in a way , paved the way for religious polarisation.The CM's donning hijab in public programmes and announcing honorarium for imams have stoked pent-up passions among Hindus in a state where many people have “crossed over“ from Bangladesh. With the Communists unable to read their minds as they had for decades, sections of bhadralok are gravitating towards saffron due to fears of being overrun by Muslims.Jihadi activities in Khagragarh have added to the fear.
“The bhadralok in Bengal were never secular. Most of them wouldn't like their sons or daughters to marry a Muslim. It's deep in their minds despite the fact that the two communities in Bengal have stayed in peace for all these years, notwithstanding occasional outbursts in 1964, 1992, and in recent times,“ said a retired government official, Debashis Sanyal.
Presidency University emeritus professor Prasanta Ray believes that this is only a slice of public opinion. “This is true for a section of the middle class, but not all. The middle class is in disarray . Most of the times they go unheard.“
What's new is the BJP's inclusion of Dalits in the scheme of things. To send out the message to the ranks, BJP president Amit Shah had lunch at Raju Mahali's house at Naxalbari digressing from the past when the BJP was seen as an upper caste party . “Even backward Muslims are our target group,“ said state BJP spokesperson Sayantan Das.
Shah, in his meeting with intellectuals in Kolkata, strummed the strings of cultural nationalism -an indigenous concept far removed from the idea borrowed from the West. The sub-text to this view calls for change in the secular, socialist tenets of the Constitution.
The `Hindu Rashtra' has little space for the other view. “It's often said Muslims who do not respect Bharat Mata should leave this country . I make my students sing the national anthem. But some want us to sing Vande Mataram which I can't enforce,“ said a Muslim teacher in Kolkata.
Singur and the Tatas
2023: Tatas awarded ₹766 cr compensation
Udit Prasanna Mukherji & Debasish Konar TNN, Oct 31, 2023: The Times of India
Kolkata : Tata Motors said that an arbitral tribunal has asked the West Bengal Industrial Development Corp to pay the company Rs 766 crore in compensation for losses incurred on its manufacturing plant in Singur, which was forced to shift to Gujarat due to opposition from farmers backed by Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, then in the opposition.
Following the stock exchange filing by Tata Motors on Monday, the TMC government said that it would appeal against the order. In October 2008, Tata Motors, which had planned to produce its small car Nano from Singur, moved to Gujarat’s Sanand due to protests that were seen to be political. By then, the Tatas had put over Rs 1,000 crore in Singur.
Social-/ community- base of parties
Trinamool’s bhadralok vis-à-vis BJP’s marginalised classes
Uday Chandra and Rounak Bose, May 17, 2024: The Times of India
Once again, Mamata Banerjee is in a fierce fight to defend her turf from BJP. And once again, Didi is fighting alone as her INDIA coalition partners contest separately.
In 2011, Trinamool Congress formed the govt after 34 years of Left Front govt in Bengal. Its popular slogan Maa Maati Maanush (mother, land, people) overrode the Left’s abstractions. But much like its communist predecessors, Trinamool has fostered a strong regionalism that equates Bengaliness with bhadralokhigh culture.
It is unsurprising, then, that those who are Bengali but not bhadralok(genteel folk) have been BJP’s principal targets since 2019. Treated contemptuously as nimnoborgo (lower strata) or, worse, chhotolok (small fry), the bottom half of society in Bengal has shown its openness to a new politics of dignity that promises to overcome the lottery of birth.
Matuas are a reformist sect of formerly untouchable and marginalised castes that have negotiated for loaves and fishes with the Modi sarkar. Seeking respectability within an all-India Hinduism, they have embraced festivals such as Ram Navami and Janmashtami, characterised by Trinamool as impositions on Bengalis by North Indian outsiders.
Stigmatised by caste as much as by forced migration from present-day Bangladesh, Matuas are now divided. The first family of the sect, descended from founder Harichand Thakur, split into pro-BJP and pro-Trinamool factions. The pro-BJP faction led by Shantanu Thakur, a minister in Modi govt and MP from Bongaon, has assured Matuas with refugee histories that their salvation lies in CAA.
But the pro-Trinamool faction, led by his aunt Mamata Bala Thakur, a Trinamool Rajya Sabha nominee, insists that CAA requires disenfranchising oneself in order to apply for new citizenship claims. As Mamata put it, Matuas are already Indian citizens, and new citizenship claims may come with fresh uncertainty.
Matuas are salient in at least 10 Lok Sabha constituencies, mainly Ranaghat and Bongaon and to a lesser extent, Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri. Outreach to them seeks to redefine what it means to be Hindu in Bengal, where ‘Hindu’ had long meant bhadralok. Successive attempts by political parties to consolidate heterodox sects and subordinated castes came to naught.
The Left Front, claiming casteblindness, attempted to stitch together a ‘socialist’ polity in which all could claim a stake. But it did not politicise Hindu-Muslim difference, as had happened in undivided Bengal, a Muslim-majority province in British India.
Today, in a state where Muslims are close to 30% of the population, BJP has pitted SC and ST groups in the state as demographic counterweights. Adivasis in the Jungle Mahals and the sub-Himalayan foothills or Rajbongshis, Namashudras, and Bagdis, together roughly half of all SCs in the state, can proclaim their Hinduness to vote for BJP now without giving up meat, alcohol and other ‘polluting’ substances. Hindu identity is now, seemingly, a wholly electoral affair.
In 2019, BJP won 18 out of 42 seats and 40.6% of votes in Bengal, winning handsomely in the ST-dominated seats in North Bengal and the Jungle Mahals. It was a close runner-up to Trinamool’s 22 seats and 43.7% of votes.
But in the 2021 assembly elections, a drop in votes by 2.6% led to a massive loss for BJP, which won only 77 out of 292 seats. We may sense a triumphant regionalism at work here, but in a short span of time, BJP has cobbled the support of roughly two in five voters in the state. Despite embarrassing reports of fake rape cases in Sandeshkhali and sexual harrassment charges against the state governor CV Ananda Bose, it remains a formidable rival to Trinamool.
Yet, unless it makes deeper inroads into the middle and top of Bengali society, it is unlikely to become the first governing party in Delhi since 1971 to win a majority of Bengal’s 42 parliamentary seats.
On the fringes, Congress and Left will fight together against both Trinamool and BJP. The INDIA coalition is missing in action. A tripartite contest is likely to favour BJP in Muslim-dominated seats by reducing Trinamool’s vote share among Muslims. Vote-cutters in 2024, these parties aim to regain lost ground in the state for the next assembly elections. It may be best to see these ferociously-contested elections as one of the final episodes of the bahubalis of Trinamool taking on everyone else.
For now, Mamata’s bhadralok identity, shared with every chief minister of the state since Independence, holds sway. After this election, though, the question on everyone’s lips is: how much longer will didigiri last?
Chandra teaches politics and history at Georgetown University, Qatar. Bose is his research assistant
State day: Poila Baisakh
Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay, Sep 8, 2023: The Times of India
Kolkata : The West Bengal assembly adopted a resolution to mark the first day of the Bengali calendar — Poila Baisakh, which falls mid-April — as “Bangla Divas (Bengal Day)” and the Rabindrasangeet “Banglar Mati, Banglar Jal” as thestate anthem.
The resolution was adopted with 167 MLAs in favour and 62 against. All 62 MLAs opposed to the resolution were from the BJP, who have been rooting for June 20 as the state day.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced on the floor of the House that the government would celebrate Bangla Divas on Poila Baisakh, regardless of the governor’s opinion on the matter. Trinamool MLAs even sang the newly adopted state anthem before singing the national anthem.
The assembly resolution to mark the Bengali New Year as Bangla Divas goes against the Centre’s — and, consequently, the state BJP’s —proposal to observe June 20 as the state foundation day. The Bengal legislative assembly had, on June 20, 1947, resolved that WestBengal would remain with India.
Mamata had objected to the idea of June 20, when ‘Paschimbanga Divas’ was observed by Raj Bhavan for the first time this year, saying it would be inappropriate, as the date was inextricably linked with Partition horrors. On Thursday, too, she hit out at BJP members in the assembly. “People of Bengal don’t support June 20, which is synonymous with violence and bloodshed during Partition, as the state foundation day. June 20 is a painful day, when Bengal was divided on the basis of religion. Why should we celebrate aday of regret and sorrow,” she asked.
Banerjee said Poila Baisakh was an apt choice as it was an auspicious day, on which new ventures were traditionally undertaken.
Voting patterns
2009-16
From: Saugata Roy, Why BJP is eyeing a breach in Didi’s Bengal fortress, March 30, 2019: The Times of India
As Vote Share Rises, Party Sees Chance In TMC ‘Disgruntlement’
In the last Lok Sabha election, when the Modi wave carried BJP and NDA to a brute majority in the Lok Sabha, BJP won just two of Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats. It was just one seat more than the 2009 election, when it won only Darjeeling, but the preview to an emerging story lay in the BJP’s vote share: from just 6.1% in 2009, it rose to 16.8% in 2014.
Five years on, BJP is talking up Bengal as one of the states where it will make gains. At a rally in North Bengal’s Alipurduar on Friday, BJP chief Amit Shah said the party will win 23 seats. On the other hand, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, who has emerged nationwide as the face of anti-BJP opposition, has set an all-42 target for her party.
There is no doubt that BJP is a growing force in Bengal. In the 2016 assembly elections, it increased its vote share (10.3%) to within touching distance of Congress (12.4%). In terms of seats, the party bagged only three of the 294 in the assembly, but compared with 2011 when it won no seats, its vote share was up by 6%. And as BJP grew, CPM suffered the heaviest losses — in a state it ruled for three decades, CPM’s vote share fell by 10% or more in both the 2014 Lok Sabha and 2016 Assembly polls.
In subsequent polls, BJP has improved further. The party came second in municipal elections such as Durgapur and Cooper’s Camp in Nadia and was ahead of CPM and Congress taken together in the 2018 panchayat polls.
But it’s not the CPM or Congress which BJP needs to worry about in Bengal. Mamata’s Trinamool Congress bagged nearly 40% of the votes in the 2014 LS election and a whopping 45.3% in the assembly polls of 2016. It improved its vote share significantly as well in both elections, sealing its position as the overwhelmingly dominant political power in Bengal, where it currently holds 34 of the 42 LS seats and 211 of the 294 assembly seats.
While Mamata focuses her attack on the Modi government on issues like demonetisation, intolerance, and using central agencies against the opposition, the BJP camp is galvanised too because it feels it has sensed a “groundswell” against Trinamool. It wants to turn the tables on Mamata riding the post-Balakot sentiment; it is aiming at a counter-consolidation of the majority community against Trinamool’s perceived “minority appeasement” and “vote bank” politics.
The perception is growing in some areas, manifest in communal incidents in at least 10 places in post-2014 Bengal. In the Cooch Behar and Uluberia Lok Sabha bypolls and Kanthi and Noapara assembly bypolls, BJP made significant gains and came second. Some of the seats where BJP is eyeing a good show, if things work to plan, are Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Raiganj, Balurghat, Malda (North), Krishnanagar, Ranaghat, Purulia, Midnapore, Asansol, Kolkata (North), Howrah, Barrackpore and Bongaon.
But BJP is yet to gain the mass base and organisational muscle to take on Trinamool in many seats. It has eroded Left and Congress vote banks but is yet to make a dent in the Trinamool’s ascending vote share, except in pockets. The party had a 20% and above vote share in as many 12 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 even at the height of the Modi wave. After Balakot, BJP has often used “anti-India” and pro-Pakistan” labels for the opposition.
Mamata, meanwhile, has her problems. The opposition hasn’t united in Bengal; Left and Congress continue to be her vocal political rivals. There’s also wariness on disgruntled Trinamool workers and violent intraparty feuds. Security has been increased for as many as 17 Trinamool leaders, showing that the party is not confident about its own men.
YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS
2017: BJP takes up void left by Left, Cong
HIGHLIGHTS
BJP is fast occupying the space of the Left and Congress across West Bengal.
BJP has been gaining mass support in West Bengal since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
However, TMC still has a good lead over others, including BJP.
In West Bengal, BJP takes up void left by Left, Congress
KOLKATA: Bengal politics is taking a bipolar course with BJP fast occupying the space of the Left and Congress across the state. The defining trend is evident from the results of the recently held seven civic polls in which Narendra Modi's party secured a 41.7% vote share in Jalpaiguri's Dhupguri municipality for the first time, a spectacular jump from the 8.6% share in 2012.
Dhupguri has a sizeable scheduled caste (Rajbanshi) and scheduled tribe population. It is 95km from Naxalbari, where BJP chief Amit Shah in April visited an adivasi family whose members were later forced to join Trinamool. Despite this, BJP has made inroads among Rajbanshis and SC/ST across the seven municipalities.
In terms of vote share, the party is ahead of the Left and Congress taken together in Haldia, Dhupguri and Panskura municipalities, and has come second in Durgapur and Nalhati. Its vote share is the same as that of the Left in Cooper's Camp. The surge in BJP's vote share is enough to put to rest the debate over the Left-Congress handholding to keep BJP at bay in Bengal.
Polls held under West Bengal State Election Commission have never been above controversy, and the polls in question are no exception. The opposition's clamour against rigging by Trinamool gains ground from the 43.4% hike in Trinamool's vote share in Cooper's Camp in Nadia compared to 2012, a 38.4% spurt in Haldia and a 26% spike in Durgapur. All these gains can't be explained by Congress leader Sankar Singh joining Trinamool in Cooper's Camp and Lakshman Seth leaving CPM in Haldia. In these places, Trinamool seniors Sankar Singh, Suvendu Adhikari and Aroop Biswas might have taken former CPM leader Anil Basu's route in Hooghly's Arambagh that once gave him the highest margins in Lok Sabha votes.
Yet, the Left and Congress can't hide their eroding base by blaming rigging. Even if Left leaders keep heaping allegations on the Trinamool toughs who had driven out CPM polling agents from booths in Haldia and Durgapur, such a situation was not unforeseen by Alimuddin Street. CPM state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra had appealed to party activists and supporters a day before the polls to stay around the booths and foil efforts to loot votes. With more than 1 lakh party card holders in Bengal, CPM has now come to a stage where it can hold impressive rallies but can't attract people. The situation is the reverse for BJP. It has been gaining mass support since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls but doesn't have able organisers and a credible Bengali face to give the final push to Trinamool.
All these have gone to the advantage of Trinamool that won 140 of the 148 wards, averting the anti-incumbency getting transferred in the EVM. Mamata Banerjee will sail safe with the divided opposition as long as BJP remains a distant second.
2018
First birth certificate secured through blockchain
Udit Prasanna Mukherji and Suman Chakraborti, December 20, 2018: The Times of India
Month-old Divit Biyani has become the first in the state to get a birth certificate, secured through blockchain.
Divit’s father Varun, who owns a start-up company, Super Procure, received the hi-tech certificate on Tuesday. Issued by the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA), the birth certificate was showcased at the two-day global blockchain congress in the city. “I’m glad the government is implementing new technology like this to secure information and prevent manual manipulation,” said Varun.
Blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger that is tamper-proof. A virtual block representing the information, in this case the person’s date of birth, is created and stored in the decentralised ledger.
Explaining the difference between a normal birth certificate and one based on blockchain, state IT&E additional chief secretary and NKDA chairman Debashis Sen said the blockchain-based certificate had an added level of security and was immune to cyber-attacks due to multi-level encryption.
2019
2 TMC MPs quit
Ahead of the general elections, Trinamool Congress suffered its first-ever defection in the Lok Sabha with its Bishnupur MP Soumitra Khan + joining the rival BJP on Wednesday. Bolpur MP Anupam Hazra is expected to follow suit.
A BJP leader said apart from Khan, “at least six TMC MPs are in touch with us”. Even as the Bengal BJP refused to name them, speculation is rife that Arpita Ghosh and Satabdi Roy, too, could desert TMC. Sources said the disgruntled TMC MPs are known to be close to the party’s former No. 2 Mukul Roy, who had joined BJP.
The rumblings within the TMC come 10 days before CM Mamata Banerjee’s January 19 Kolkata rally aimed at giving shape to an anti-BJP platform. TMC was quick to expel both Khan and Hazra for anti-party activities, while accusing them of corruption. The buzz about both the MPs joining BJP had been on since the monsoon session last year as it was clear TMC would not re-nominate them in the Lok Sabha polls.
Training his guns on the CM, Soumitra Khan said TMC was no longer a party but a “private company” of Mamata and her nephew Abhishek. “A syndicate raj and police raj are going on hand-in-hand in Bengal,” he said.
Abhishek, an observer for Bankura, said, “Soumitra was a ‘jote’ (Trinamool and Congress) candidate in 2011, switched to Trinamool and became an MP in 2014. He should provide accounts for MPLAD expenditure. He’s accountable to people.”
Khan’s decision to quit TMC came soon after Bankura SDPO Sukomal Das registered a case against him following complaints of corruption in recruitment of primary teachers. A day earlier, the MP’s assistant Susanta Dan was arrested.
The Bishnupur MP had met BJP president Amit Shah before joining the party in the presence of Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Khan has been assured a BJP ticket in the general elections, BJP sources said. Khan’s entry will give a fillip to BJP in Bankura, where the party had won 234 gram panchayat seats.
Cabinet reshuffled as 1 TMC MLA, 50 councillors join BJP
May 29, 2019: The Times of India
After BJP stunned Trinamool in West Bengal by making big gains in the state in the Lok Sabha elections, chief minister Mamata Banerjee rejigged her 43-member cabinet with her focus firmly on North Bengal and Jangalmahal, where her party faced huge reverses.
Mamata’s damage control exercise came barely a couple of hours after three Bengal MLAs and 50 civic councillors joined BJP at a press conference at its central headquarters in Delhi. While the MLAs are from Trinamool, Congress and CPM, all the councillors are from Bengal’s ruling party.
The MLAs who crossed over included Subhrangshu Roy, the son of Mamata’s erstwhile confidante and now BJP leader Mukul Roy. Tusharkanti Bhattacharya (Congress) and Debendra Roy (CPM) are the other two MLAs.
BJP threatened more damage to Trinamool. “We will induct people from other parties in phases, just like elections in Bengal were held in seven phases. Tuesday’s was the first phase. Many more are in touch with us,” party general secretary and Bengal in-charge Kailash Vijayvargiya said, referring to PM Narendra Modi’s statement during the campaign that over 40 TMC MLAs were in touch with BJP.
The 'cut money' controversy
June 28, 2019: The Times of India
What's the 'cut money' that Bengal is angry about?
NEW DELHI: Amidst allegations of corruption against the West Bengal government, the new word trending in the state's politics is 'cut money'. As BJP corners the government on cut money, CM Mamata Banerjee has inadvertently admitted to corruption in the ruling Trinamool Congress. But what is cut money and how does it qualify to be categorised under corruption?
Cut money is the unofficial commission charged by local politicians for getting government grants for local area projects approved — so named for the 'cut' of the total money given by the government department. So for instance, if the government releases Rs 100 toward financing a particular project, the local area politician, who many times are elected representatives, will take, say, Rs 25, as 'charges' for helping get the grant. This cut is shared all the way up from the lowest grassroots level politician to the senior most in the ruling party's food chain.
Is it official?
Not at all, but since when did that stop anything. The cut is usually taken in cash, to prevent any records of the money coming on the taxman's radar. Given that funds released for a project run into several crore, the cut money from a single project could run into many lakh — as evident from the fact that an All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) booth president Trilochan Mukherjee returned over Rs 2.25 lakh cut money taken from 141 labourers from their eight months' wages.
Besides, it's not like the malaise is limited to just the AITC or West Bengal — a transparency international report last year revealed that bribery in India grew 11% in one year, with government officials of Punjab, MP and UP the most corrupt.
Controversial cut
West Bengal chief minister and AITC founder Mamata Banerjee stirred a hornet's nest when last week, at a meeting with party workers, she warned them to return the cut money or get ready to go to jail.
The warning, a tacit admission of the corruption that has seeped in AITC, has also led to a lot of heartburn among the grassroots level workers who feel that they are being cornered to return their cut of the money while there's no word on the senior leaders of the party to whom a percentage of the cut was also given.
In fact, AITC MP Satabdi Roy criticised Banerjee's directive, saying that "a person who has taken cut money directly is only the front man. There are others who are behind him. They have also taken their share, so the money has to be returned according to this chain."
The jam she caused
While Banerjee may have thought she was pre-empting an opposition move to nail her government on corruption, the legacy of cut money is believed to be a carry-over from the decades of Left party rule in the state. Apart from the opposition — the Congress, the Left and the BJP — who have cornered the Banerjee government on the issue in the state assembly, locals across the state are coming out in protest demanding a return of the cut money. This has, in turn, created a law and order issue, forcing the police to ask protestors to file a police complaint against people who have taken cut money, in order to get a 'refund'.
The state police registering cases against the state's ruling party MLAs? That ought to be interesting!
Meanwhile, BJP MP Saumitra Khan, who raised the issue of cut money in the Lok Sabha, sought an investigation into how much funds have gone into the chief minister and her family's account.
TMC sweeps bypoll 3:0; credits NRC
Nov 29, 2019: The Times of India
Trinamool Congress made a clean sweep of the bypolls in three assembly constituencies of Bengal, wresting a seat each from BJP and Congress as CM Mamata Banerjee declared her party’s triumph a “mandate against NRC” while BJP took its loss as “a wake-up call” before the 2021 assembly battle.
While BJP highlighted why it wants the NRC in Bengal, TMC conveyed the message that even Hindu refugees in the border seats wouldn’t be safe if such an exercise were to be carried out. Mamata said, “The mandate is very clear. It is against NRC. People have voted against NRC. I do not want any NRC in Bengal and it should not happen anywhere in the country.”
BJP’s Kaliaganj candidate Kamal Chandra Sarkar blamed the loss on the NRC issue. “We have lost despite a massive lead in the Lok Sabha polls. We lost as there has been confusion over NRC implementation in Bengal, PTI quoted Sarkar as saying.
BJP national secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, however, attributed TMC’s hattrick to “booth-jamming with the help of local police”.
Poor relations between TMC and governor
The temporary paralysis of the assembly in session is the culmination of several months of differences between the Bengal government and the governor.
The first major flashpoint came when the governor rushed to Jadavpur University in September to “rescue” junior Union minister Babul Supriyo from campus protests; Trinamool has, several times since then, accused Dhankhar of working for BJP.
For the first time in recent memory, lawmaking has been suspended for two days in the West Bengal assembly with the state government and the governor blaming each other for the inability to place bills for discussion in the House.
Speaker Biman Banerjee told MLAs on Tuesday that the House would remain suspended for two days because of lack of business. It would resume business on Friday, he added. PTI quoted Banerjee as saying, “The House will be adjourned for two days. The bills which were scheduled to be placed won’t be tabled as they are yet to receive the nod of the governor. We had sent those bills for printing but can’t place them in the assembly...”
But Raj Bhavan said the government submitted bills for the governor’s consent only last Friday, leaving one working day (Monday) for him to give his nod to six bills. “I am neither a rubber-stamp governor nor am I a post office. I have to scrutinise the bills in the light of the Indian Constitution,” Dhankhar told TOI.
State parliamentary affairs minister Partha Chatterjee, however, accused the governor of having “an ulterior motive”. “It appears that he is functioning like an opposition party. He could have sent back the files or rejected them; that would have been better,” Chatterjee said.
2020
Defections from TMC, Cong. Left to BJP
Sujoy Khanra, December 20, 2020: The Times of India
From: Sujoy Khanra, December 20, 2020: The Times of India
In an unprecedented pre-poll churn in West Bengal that Union home minister Amit Shah ter med “just the beginning”, former heavyweight Trinamool Congress minister and Mamata Banerjee aide Suvendu Adhikari on Saturday led a batch of 10 turncoat MLAs and one MP — eight of them Trinamool deserters, two from Left and one Congress — to the ranks of BJP.
A total of 60 other councillors, zilla parishad and panchayat samiti members from various parties switched to saffron in the presence of Shah, whom Adhikari referred to as “my elder brother”.
“You will be left alone by the time Bengal goes to polls,” Shah said, alluding to Mamata, at a rally in Midnapore, considered Adhikari’s bastion.
TMC taking recourse to ‘politics of fear’ to stay in office: Shah
Two-time East Burdwan MP Sunil Mondal rounded off BJP’s day of gains at Trinamool’s expense. Arch-rebel Adhikari had travelled to Midnapore from Kolkata along with Shah on the latter’s chopper. “Nobody from the party I served for 22 years called me when I was quarantined at home after contracting Covid. Shah called me twice. Mukulda (Mukul Roy, who joined BJP from Trinamool in 2017) used to tell me that I would not be able to stay in that party with self-respect,” he said.
After accepting BJP flag from Shah, Adhikari stressed the need for Bengal to discard the “anti-Centre narrative” of Left and TMC in favour of Centre-state synergy. “I believe both Kolkata and Delhi should have governments under Modiji’s party for the sake of Bengal’s development,” he said.
Countering Trinamool’s “traitor” tag for Adhikari with Trinamool’s history, Shah said, “Didi, what did you do when you quit Congress to form Trinamool?” Shah charged the state government with taking recourse to “the politics of fear” to stay in power. “More than 300 BJP workers have been killed. They threw stones at BJP chief JP Nadda’s convoy. Didi thought we would give up. We will not,” he said. Shah had visited freedom fighter Shahid Khudiram Bose’s family before reaching the Midnapore College ground, indicating a resolve to shake off the “outsider” label that Trinamool has stuck on BJP’s central leadership.
Adhikari reminded his critics that Trinamool could not have survived without former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s support. “Trinamool was part of the NDA then.”
2021
Oct: Mamata Banerjee’s biggest-ever victory margin
Tamaghna Banerjee & Rohit Khanna, Oct 3, 2021: The Times of India
Voters in south Kolkata’s Bhowanipore on Sunday gave their “ghorer meye” (daughter of the house) Mamata Banerjee the mandate she needed to continue as Bengal CM in the form of her biggestever victory margin of 58,835 votes in an assembly poll, report Tamaghna Banerjee & Rohit Khanna. Trinamool also retained the Jangipur and Shamsherganj seats.
CPM gets 3.5% of vote share; TMC bags 2 other seats too
There were so many conspiracies against me. The people of Bhowanipore have given a befitting reply to those conspiracies and the conspirators...You have inspired me to work harder,” she said, basking in the afterglow of a comeback just five months after a rare poll setback in Nandigram. “They sent 3,500 central forces to this small constituency. But the people of Bhowanipore have given an answer on behalf of Bengal and India,” Mamata said in her seven-minute-31-second victory speech, punctuated with chants of “Didi, Didi” from the crowd.
Jakir Hossain won Jangipur for Trinamool by a staggering 92,480 votes while Amirul Islam emerged victorious in Shamsherganj to maintain the party’s strength of 213 in the 294-member assembly. Party seniors said the ease of Mamata’s victory, more than anything else, would help set the agenda for the four bypolls later this month and the civic elections after that.
The Bhowanipore win was the first time since 2014 that Trinamool had led in all eight wards of this multilingual and multicultural seat, giving Mamata the ammo to respond to BJP’s jibes that her party is overly dependent on specific voter blocs. The CM didn’t lose the opportunity to emphasise this point in her first remarks after the victory. “Every ward has given us a lead. This is a seat where Hindus stay with Muslims and Sikhs and Bengalis stay with Gujaratis, Punjabis, Oriyas, Biharis and people from UP. I thank every one of them,” she said.
For Mamata, the victory margin of 58,000-plus votes bettered her 2011 vote tally of 54,213, also in a byelection. The margin was also more than double of Trinamool’s April 26 victory by 28,719 votes, when it had trailed in two wards (Chakraberia-Paddapukur and Alipore). Mamata got 71.9% of the total votes cast, leaving only 22.2% for BJP candidate Priyanka Tibrewal. BJP had garnered a vote share of more than 35% barely five months ago.
CPM also took a body blow, getting only 3.5 % of the vote share and losing its deposit in a seat labelled “mini India” during the bypoll campaign.
Mamata stressed all these points and more in her speech from the lane outside her Kalighat home, flanked by her sisters-in-law, nephew and party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee and his school-going daughter. The backdrop was a giant photocollage that supporters had put up a few minutes earlier. Emblazoned across the collage was the coinage “Modishahsurmardini (slayer of the Modi-Shah asura)”.
2023
BJP, Congress. CPM join hands against TMC in Panchayat elections
(With inputs from Suman Mandal, Ashis Poddar & Sukumar Mahato), August 10, 2023: The Times of India
Kolkata : Burying their ideological differences, winners from BJP, CPM and Congress joined hands to form boards in at least three gram panchayats in West Bengal in order to keep Trinamool Congress at bay.
BJPand CPM formed the gram panchayat board jointly at Mahishadal in East Midnapore district. BJP and TMC had bagged eight seats each out of 18, while CPM had won two. BJP’s Subhra Panda and CPM’s Paresh Panigrahi were elected pradhan and upa-pradhan, respectively.
Amritberia was tense since the morning over the formation of the panchayat board, with TMC’s Mahisadal MLA Tilak Kumar Chakraborty accusing CPM of providing tacit sup port to BJP against Trinamool Congress.
BJP and CPM, however, denied any understanding and said the decision was because of local compulsions. CPM panchayat member Bulu Prasad Jana said: “INDIA alliance is a decision of the party at the national level. But, I supported the BJP-led panchayat board to honour the sentiment of local people.”
BJP spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya said equations on ground were different from what they are at state and national levels.
(With inputs from Suman Mandal, Ashis Poddar & Sukumar Mahato)
2024
‘Cash-for-jobs’: HC scraps all but one of 25.7k school hirings
Subrata Chattoraj, April 23, 2024: The Times of India
Kolkata : Calcutta HC invalidated all but one of 25,758 appointments made by Bengal’s School Service Commission (SSC) in 2016 and ordered around 1,600 of these recruits to return within four weeks the salaries and allowances they had been paid so far with 12% interest.
The division bench of Justices Debangsu Basak and Md Shabbar Rashidi made a lone exception for cancer patient Soma Das, who got her job “on humanitarian grounds”.
Stating it was difficult under the circumstances to “sift the grain from the chaff”, HC said the “exact number” of people benefiting from “manipulations and illegalities” in the selection process couldn’t be identified. “We are left with the option of cancelling all appointments,” it said, directing CBI to continue with its probe into the ‘cash-for-jobs’ case and quiz people in custody, if necessary.
Lok Sabha election
A
June 5, 2024: The Times of India
From: June 5, 2024: The Times of India
Kolkata : Bengal’s voters gave BJP a feeble mandate in 2024 Lok Sabha elections, helping Trinamool Congress (TMC) contain the saffron party largely to its pockets of influence and giving CM Mamata Banerjee the double delight of a weakened Centre and a weaker opposition in the state.
BJP won or led in 12 of 42 seats in Bengal — down from its 2019 tally of 18. Trinamool increased its count from 22 to 29. Congress managed to retain one of its bastions in Malda (South) but, in one of the biggest upsets of this election, old warhorse Adhir Chowdhury lost his Behrampore seat for the first time since 1999 to Trinamool newbie and former Team India cricketer Yusuf Pathan. Left Front, which fought as part of INDIA bloc, repeated its 2019 no-show in Bengal.
Trinamool increased its vote share from 43.7% in 2019 to 45.7%, while both BJP and Congress-LF combine saw theirs sliding. BJP slid from 40.6% to 38.7% and the combined Congress-LF vote share slipped from 13.2% to 10.3% this time.
BJP won Contai and Tamluk in East Midnapore, the home district of its state poll mascot, Suvendu Adhikari, by not-so-impressive margins, but saw two of its three Union ministers lose — Subhas Sarkar in Bankura and Nisith Pramanik in Coochbehar. The third junior Union minister, Shantanu Thakur, won in Bongaon.
Former state BJP chief Dilip Ghosh, too, lost in Burdwan-Durgapur, where he was shifted just before the election season from his old seat of Midnapore. The party, in the bargain, also lost Midnapore. BJP lost Barrackpore as well, where it fielded Arjun Singh. Voter confusion over his multiple flip-flops and which party he was representing this time may have played a part.
North Bengal and a few isolated pockets like Purulia, Bishnupur and Ranaghat gave BJP some comfort but, everywhere, the margin seemed to be coming down substantially.
Trinamool ticked all the boxes in this election. A large part of its impressive showing came from the support of women voters, who benefited from welfare schemes like Lakshmir Bhandar and Sabuj Sathi. Voters benefiting from Swasthya Sathi played a role, too.
BJP failed in almost all its poll pitches. The Sandeshkhali narrative that it built during the start of the campaign seemed to have come apart after the release of sting videos, which showed local BJP functionaries admitting that women were coached to file rape complaints. BJP lost Basirhat and, more significantly, trailed in Sandeshkhali assembly segment.
Trinamool also thwarted BJP’s CAA-NRC pitch, sowing apprehension and confusion among voters over how things would play out after they applied for Indian citizenship under CAA. BJP retained both Ranaghat and Bongaon — where Matuas are a substantial chunk — but appeared to be doing so with reduced margins.
BJP’s last-ditch attempt to play the “appeasement” card against Trinamool failed to make any significant impact. The Bengal campaign of PM Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah started with a focus on development and “Modi ki guarantee”, but changed tracks midway, with an increased glare on Trinamool’s “appeasement” politics. This preempted any chances of a largescale split of Muslim votes between Trinamool and Congress-LF combine. Trinamool would have gained from the resultant Muslim vote consolidation, but there was no substantial Hindu vote consolidation to help BJP.
Trinamool successfully countered the last weapon in BJP’s arsenal — “corruption” in the state administration — with an amplified message to voters that Centre was playing political vendetta in denying the state its share of funds.
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Saibal.Sen, June 5, 2024: The Times of India
■ Dec 1984: A young greenhorn Congress worker from Kalighat — wearing a sari and hawai chappals — has just done the unbelievable, defeating CPM veteran Somnath Chatterjee from Jadavpur, the reddest of red citadels. Mamata Banerjee herself seems surprised and pundits attribute her victory to the sympathy wave that Congress benefited from after Indira Gandhi’s assassination
■ May 2024: Mamata Banerjee is canvassing for votes at Jadavpur’s Baro Bhooter Math (translated as the “ground belonging to a dozen ghosts”). She can work up the crowd to her will and asks for this seat once more so that she can help INDIA bloc in Lok Sabha, never mind that the alliance is not on in Bengal
In a political career of five decades, Banerjee has proved her critics wrong multiple times. After a bruising, months-long campaign, with her party winning 29 seats in Bengal — its second best Lok Sabha performance after 2014 when it won 34 — she has had the last laugh again. The tally has gone up substantially from 22 in 2019.
Leading the party with 108 public rallies and multiple road shows, one of which saw her walk 12km at a stretch on her south Kolkata home turf, Banerjee, 69, criss-crossed from Coochbehar in the northernmost extreme to South 24 Parganas, where Bengal meets the Bay of Bengal. She went to Nandigram, where she lost in 2021 (a legal battle is still on over BJP’s alleged electoral malpractices). And Sandeshkhali, where her partymen have been accused of rape and land-grab, before sting videos threw up a counter-narrative of allegations being “BJP-engineered”.
This journey, where PM Modi’s campaign has tried to shift the burden of anti-incumbency to the state govt, was to reach the hearts of Bengal’s women (through schemes like Lakshmir Bhandar) and its minorities (with about a quarter of the state’s votes), even trying to establish Trinamool as a nativist party of the Bengali-Hindu majority through references to Durga Puja (now a Unescorecognised “intangible cultural heritage”) and the legacy of Swami Vivekananda.
Questioned for her decision to go solo, which had the potential to split traditional minority votes, Banerjee has been proven right — the community stood rock solid behind her. By splitting the Bengal battle into a three-way contest, Trinamool’s gains outweigh its losses. In the close contests which went its way, Congress-Left vote shares were higher than Trinamool’s victory margins, indicating a split in anti-Trina- mool votes. Difference in vote share in 2024 between Trinamool and BJP has widened to 10%.
With a final tally of 29 seats — third highest among opposition parties in India (after Congress and SP) — it gains more elbow room in INDIA bloc. That Left-Congress barely scraped through with one seat in Bengal also vindicates a pre-poll offer by Banerjee for 2-3 seats. The results may settle the unease in the Congress-Trinamool relationship. Banerjee has already said she disapproves of the way CPM “monitors” Congress in INDIA bloc. Finally, the Trinamool win sets up a lot of expectations. Most importantly, Banerjee has promised to ease the central fund flow into MGNREGA in Bengal. Her social schemes have been a defining factor. A weakened BJP at the Centre, and a stronger INDIA bloc, allows her to go beyond the anti-Centre pitch and get work done.
BJP’s face of Sandeshkhali fight loses by 3.3 lakh votes
Sumati Yengkhom & Sanjib Chakraborty TNN, June 5, 2024: The Times of India
Kolkata: Basirhat Lok Sabha constituency, which includes Sandeshkhali, handed over a decisive mandate to TMC with its candidate Haji Nurul Islam trouncing BJP’s Rekha Patra by a margin of over 3.3 lakh votes. Trinamool not only retained Basirhat but maintained its lead in Sandeshkhali assembly segment, which is a part of the Lok Sabha constituency. All trouble spots in Sandeshkhali also voted in Trinamool’s favour.
The restive belt has been on the boil since Jan 5 when an ED team came under mob attack near the premises of suspended TMC strongman Sheikh Shahjahan. ED officials had gone to Sarberia in Sandeshkhali to raid premises of Shahjahan, an accused in the ration scam.
BJP had whipped up a political storm over the alleged atrocities on women and land grabbing by local Trinamool functionaties. The party fielded greenhorn Patra, an alleged victim of atrocities, against Islam, an MLA and former MP. Even PM Narendra Modi promoted Patra as “shakti swaroopa” (embodiment of Shakti).
A series of accusation followed with a section of women alleging sexual abuse and land grabbing by Shahjahan and his men. While their agitation led to arrest of Shahjahan, Uttam Sardar and Shibu Hazra, it took a political turn with TMC accusing BJP of engineering the agi- tation. They countered the claim with sting videos which claimed that it was a ‘false’ campaign prompted by BJP.
Reacting to TMC win, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said: “People of Sandeshkhali have responded to this vicious campaign by voting for us where we led not only in the Sandeshkhali assembly segment but in the booths in localities where people protested. I salute people of Sandeshkhali.”
“This is a victory for the people who have been with us all along. People in their verdict have shown that the Sandeshkhali campaign was baseless,” said Haji Nurul Islam.
Patra, on the other hand, claimed: “Voting was rigged in at least 500 booths by TMC.”
