People's Democracy

  LF Sweeps Kolkata, Bidhan Nagar Civic Elections

B Prasant

A view of victory celebrations by LF supporters in Kolkata

BENGAL Left Front has won, and in a decisive manner, the elections held to the Kolkata municipal corporation and the Bidhan Nagar municipality. 

Kolkata saw the Left Front win 75 of the 141 seats contested.  The Left Front won Bidhan Nagar by sweeping 18 of the 23 seats.  In each instance, the opposition was left far behind, wallowing in the wake of the popular wins.

In a statement, Anil Biswas, secretary of the Bengal unit of the CPI(M) has congratulated the people of Kolkata and Bidhan Nagar for expressing their trust and reliance on the Left Front in the civic polls.  He felicitated the population of the Uttarpara-Kotrung municipality (where the Trinamul Congress retained the board) for exercising their democratic rights.

VOTE FOR POLITICAL OUTLOOK & DEVELOPMENT

Anil Biswas believes that the popular verdict in Kolkata and Bidhan Nagar is in strong favour of the lofty political outlook and the pro-people developmental policy of the Bengal Left Front.  The people have responded to the need for the development of the metropolis and of Bidhan Nagar to be in line with that of the state as a whole.  The people have voted in favour of the developmental activities carried out by the LF-run Bidhan Nagar civic board.

In Kolkata and Bidhan Nagar, the people have rejected the opposition conglomerate of the Pradesh Congress, the Trinamul Congress, the BJP, and their running lackeys.  The earlier KMC board was a Trinamul Congress-BJP affair.  In Bidhan Nagar, the Left Front could retain with much the greater margin than on the last occasion.

The Bengal Left Front’s electoral triumph is also a blow to the Bengal corporate media, audio-visual and print.  The corporate media here is certainly unique in the country for its extreme constancy of vituperative and malevolent attacks on the Left in general and the CPI(M) in particular. In these elections also they ran a fairly coordinated campaign of vicious lies and half-truths against the Left Front. 

MEDIA REBUFFED

The media barons had all the time projected the earlier KMC board as ‘pro-development’ and ‘pro-modernisation,’ accolades that did not cut ice with the electorate which saw the metropolis sinking into a morass of civic misadministration under the corrupt and bickering Trinamul-BJP board’s anti-people drives.

Anil Biswas has pointed out that there was a definitive swing this time around for the Bengal Left Front. The victory of the Bengal Left Front proved, said the CPI(M) leader, how the popular base of the Left Front kept expanding.  The electoral wins have certainly devolved more responsibility to the Left Front in the task of accelerating the pace of development, remaining all the while with the masses of the people. 

The table below provides the basic details of the poll results for Kolkata, comparing the 2005 results with those obtained in 2000.

 KMC RESULTS

*Both partners put up candidates for one seat.

@An independent joined Trinamul Congress subsequent to the polls.

In Bidhan Nagar

*CPI(M)-supported independent.

POLLING PEACEFUL

Earlier, the civic polls to the Kolkata, Bidhan Nagar (Salt Lake), and Uttarpara-Kotrung urban local bodies saw generally peaceful elections on June 19. The opposition Trinamul Congress and the Pradesh Congress did try in a desultory manner to disrupt the poll process but were rebuffed by the people who came out in large numbers, ignoring the burning heat of the day to cast their ballots.

In a statement, the state secretary of the Bengal CPI(M), Anil Biswas congratulated the people of Kolkata, Bidhan Nagar, and Uttarpara-Kotrung for keeping alive the tradition of generally peaceful voting patterns for every election, to the parliament, to the state assembly, to the panchayats, and to the urban local bodies.  He also had a good word for the Bengal Left Front government for arrangement of security on the poll day.

Addressing a media conference at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan later in the evening of the day of the election, Anil Biswas was confident that the Left Front would emerge decisively victorious in the polls to the Kolkata Corporation and the Bidhan Nagar municipality while improving its position in the Uttarpara-Kotrung local body.  The Trinamul-BJP combine ran the outgoing Kolkata Corporation board by a slender majority.

Narrating the sporadic attempts by the Trinamul Congress and the Pradesh Congress to try to upset the generally peaceful polling throughout the day, Anil Biswas said that attempts were made in some Kolkata and Bidhan Nagar wards to lob bombs at the voters, to attack Left Front workers, to smash electronic voting machines, and to provoke election officials.

Biswas was very critical of a section of the audio-visual media for spreading the canard that chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee ‘could not exercise his voting right.’  Biswas said that such efforts at blatant lying “depicted an extremely irresponsible behaviour.”  The CPI(M) leader also mentioned the unfortunate incident that took place at Bidhan Nagar on poll day under provocation from the Trinamul Congress where voters were physically heckled.  He said that “should not have happened.”

The opposition Pradesh Congress, Trinamul Congress, and the BJP sang the tune of ‘rigged elections’ something that they have been known to indulge for a long time now, after every election.  Biswas said that the dirge of the opposition hardly needed any response from the Bengal CPI(M). He exhorted upon the Left Front workers to remain with the people in the task of maintaining the democratic atmosphere that prevailed in Bengal.