People's Democracy

WEST BENGAL PANCHAYAT POLLS

Second & Third Phases Witness

Largely Peaceful Polling

B Prasant

EXCEPT for a few unpleasant incidents --- the handiwork of the combined opposition at the village level --- a massive turnout marked the second phase of the rural general elections in Bengal. Going to the polls in the second phase on May 14 were the following districts --- Howrah, Hooghly, the two 24 Parganas (South and North) and Nadia, which are mostly around Kolkata.

These five districts have a total of 1,31,43,000 voters for the three tiers of Gram Panchayat, Panchayat Samity and Zilla Parishad. At the three layers from bottom to top, the numbers of seats under contest were 14739, 3020 and 252 respectively.

Madan Ghosh, a member of the CPI(M) Central Committee and also of its West Bengal state secretariat, informed that 80 to 90 percent voters exercised their franchise in these five districts, and that this testified to the free and fair character of the polls.

The days preceding the polls saw the CPI(M) and other Left Front parties decorating the camp offices in a festive mood, and we saw a large percentage of women in places like Paschim Gopinathpur and Chandanpur busily putting up innumerable Red Flags of various sizes. These were hand-made flags, made from various materials including pieces of paper and cloth collected from the ostagars and snipped to the regulation size with pairs of busy scissors. The picture was more or less the same all over all the five districts.

The CPI(M) leadership and especially the workers appeared to be in a fairly celebratory mood. They were also vigilant. Bharati Mukherjee, CPI(M) MLA from Haripal, told us how an organised attempt was made earlier in the day when the opposition �braves,� aided and abetted by the riff-raff expelled earlier from the CPI(M), working to a plan, tried to run amuck and set up a r�gime of anarchy in and in front of the polling stations and the CPI(M) camps. It is another thing that did not exactly succeed in this game. The spirited resistance offered by the CPI(M) workers ensured that their attempts failed miserably, and soon the miscreants were on the run --- guns, knives, staves, and all.

Nevertheless, this sort of resolution did not happen everywhere. What we saw, as we returned to the city, was sad because the polls were in general peaceful. However, there is little doubt that the combined might of the media, their corporate bosses, the bourgeois parties, and the ultra elements on the lunatic fringe on the right and the left, tried to single out the exceptions, highlight them with a judicious mixture of their lies and half-truths, and scream in banner headlines that �violence mars the polls.� Here we may tell what actually happened.

The Naxalite elements were active at Balagarh in Hooghly where they raised their own hackles by asking intemperate questions about how a ballot paper should be folded --- of all things --- and then staged a much photographed �walkout.� Asked about their support base in the area, they looked at us with a scoffing, withering look, and march silently off to the expensive vehicles parked nearby. So much for the votaries of an �agrarian revolution.�

In Pursura in the same district, one found 9 booths bereft of opposition polling agents --- the opposition outfits were not capable of putting up agents despite money being publicly put on the offer.

At Amdanga in North 24 Parganas, which was a Congress base in the early 1970s, tradition was revived when the lathi wielding Pradesh Congress goons threw a series of deadly IEDs at polling stations until the police chased them away.

In South 24 Parganas, the SUCI, Trinamul Congress and, sad to say, some elements close to the Left Front joined hands to attack a series of booths at Kultali, Benodepur and Baikunthspur, deep inside the green of the rural belt. The CPI(M) had to ask for re-election in all these booths that had been virtually run over by miscreants.

At Basanti, an utterly deplorable incident occurred when the RSP workers, in conjunction with opposition elements of criminal disposition, mounted an armed attack on CPI(M) workers, the police and the polling set-up of officials, and sought to openly and shamelessly capture a dozen odd booths. In the fracas that took place, one CPI(M) worker and two RSP activists died. To our unreserved regret, a woman from a nearby rural locality died from bomb injuries she suffered. She was standing in queue to cast her vote when she was caught in the running battle.

The RSP workers also utilised opposition cadres to indulge in a shoot-out with the police at Canning. The CPI(M) had to demanded repolling here. The SUCI and Trinamul Congress too created trouble at Namkhana in the same district.

At Panchla in Howrah also, polling was marred by an inopportune incident. Here the Pradesh Congress goons threw powerful bombs at several booths. This caused a huge panic among the women standing in line to cast their votes. Tightly clutching her one year old baby, a distressed mother ran until she realised that the poor tot had been suffocated to death in her fatal embrace.

Fundamentalist outfits too launched attacks at two places in West Howrah. Here, in one incident, one of their bomb throwing cadre died when the bomb he was about to lob onto a polling booth prematurely burst in his hands. Earlier, a CPI (M) worker, Comrade Sanjib Dolui (21), died from injuries suffered from another round of explosives attack by the Pradesh Congress at Kalyanpur in the same district.

The third phase of polling on May 17 was, literally, a case of rain or shine. In most parts of the northern, central and western Bengal where 7 districts went for the rural polls, a fiercely hot, oppressingly humid and a cloudlessly sunny day suddenly did a turn-around and displayed the vagaries of Bengal�s summer weather.

By early afternoon on the day, a quick and low gathering of dark and heavy nimbus clouds overhead burst with a torrential rain, followed by widespread spattering of sizeable hailstones. This happened in all the 7 districts, viz Birbhum, North Dinajpore, South Dinajpore, Maldah, Murshidabad, Coochbehar and Jalpaiguri.

On the day, the lines of voters stretched very long in most places. But these politically conscious village folk of Bengal, with indomitable will, were only momentarily disoriented. Determined to cast their hard-earned right to franchise, a right won under the Left Front government, they rejoined quickly enough, with friendly jostlings on the issue involving �but that had been my place in the queue� being perhaps the only fall-out of the nature�s fury.

The police personnel whom we saw at places like Nanur in Birbhum were clearly taken aback, as were the poll officials, at this rapid return of the masses. Their ID cards were carefully sheltered in polythene bags, as the astute rural folks were carrying them, perhaps in anticipation of the weather.

Voters started pouring in, in the opening hours of the morning, and the poll process inevitably went on until quite late evening. The districts reported serpentine queues at nearly every booth in all the 7 districts by the time the evening approached and the cricket-chirping dark of the rural night started to creep in.

It was then estimated that the ultimate figure of polling was around 85 percent, at par with the that in the earlier two phases of the seventh panchayat general elections.

Voting officials or the police had little to complain about. The bandobast was heavy and well-placed, because almost everywhere the villagers stood as one and chased away miscreants before they could cause any harm to the ambience of peace. These miscreants comprised mostly the Pradesh Congress hoodlums in the 6 central and north Bengal districts and the Trinamul Congress goons in Birbhum. The anti-people and anti-poor Maoists again managed to make themselves scarce in view of the huge turnout of voters.

Nonetheless, lives, precious lives, were lost during the final phase. Numbers can, of course, never sanctify the pain, grief and tragic tears that the passing away of villagers at the hands of criminal gangs that are nurtured, guided and of course patronised by the opposition of the right as well as left variety.

The Trinamul Congress hoodlums set fire to a series of hutments of CPI(M) supporters near Nanur in Birbhum in the afternoon, at a time when the young and the able were out queuing up at the polling stations. Still rings in our ears the shrill and helpless cry that went up from the elderly and the infirm for water to douse the flames that would soon reduce to rubble the dry-thatched mud huts. There was a searing unease even when we were back to the metropolis.

With cold and feral ruthlessness, Pradesh Congress goons organised attacks on CPI(M) workers on the day --- at places like Nabagram, Raninagar and Hariharpara in Murshidabad. These took place under the supervision and guidance of their leader and historysheeter, Adhir Chaudhuri who calls the district his �hunting ground.� But unlike in 2003, the gangs were not able to proceed north up to Beldanga, as per what must have been their original criminal intent.

Three CPI(M) workers were martyred in the fury of these armed assaults, and 16 were left heavily injured. Another CPI(M) supporter was killed and 8 were left wounded at Birbhum. The terai region of Jalpaiguri witnessed one CPI(M) worker done to death and 5 down with grievous injuries.

In the fracas that followed the attack at Nabagram, as the villagers came out wielding lathis and little else, two Pradesh Congress killers were severely beaten up. Both of them later succumbed to injuries when they were being taken to hospitals. In a non-poll-related incident in Birbhum, a BJP worker killed his brother, because of a family feud, when both were standing in queue to vote.

At Chopra in North Dinajpore, a zonal committee member of the CPI(M) was targeted for killing but he escaped with bullet injuries to the shoulder. His life of saved courtesy the unarmed villagers who rushed out, intervened and threw a cordon around him, braved the gun-toting Pradesh Congress assailants and drove them away.

As Biman Basu, West Bengal Left Front chairman, later said, the earlier differences of opinion within the Left Front were quite soothed over by the time the polling took place --- except in a few instances. He congratulated the people for making the three-phase polling to the three-tier panchayati raj institutions a massive and peaceful affair. He also thanked the media for properly focussing, for a change, on his earlier appeal for Left unity, in the subsequent newscasts. (INN)