Unbridled violence, rampant poll malpractices and panicked poll workers and voters caught in violence crossfire at multiple political hotspots of the state marred the panchayat elections in Bengal, killing 15 people and injuring scores of others even before the polls drew to a close on Saturday.
At least 24 people among those injured sustained bullet injuries from illegal weapons which were brandished with impunity during the day by politically-sheltered criminals even as the stench of gunpowder from firearms and crude bombs filled the air of rural Bengal.
The fact that the instances of murders were reported from over a third of the 22 districts which went for polls, where both central and state forces were found wanting during violence, converted the exercise of establishing grassroots democracy into a farce.
State election commission figures confirmed a 66.28 per cent voter turnout till 5pm, a comparatively low figure by rural Bengal standards. Although that percentage is likely to go up a bit further after the polls draw to a formal close, political intimidation may have caused a section of voters to stay uncharacteristically indoors.
Murshidabad recorded the highest number of poll-related mortalities on Saturday with five deaths followed closely by Cooch Behar where three people succumbed to their injuries. Two people each were murdered in East Burdwan and North Dinajpur and one person each in Malda, Nadia and South 24 Parganas districts. 10 of those killed on Saturday were workers and supporters of the ruling Trinamul Congress. Losses suffered by the opposition camps stood at five till reports last received with one Congress worker and two BJP supporters losing their lives following clashes with the Trinamul on the day of polls. The CPI-M, too, lost two of its workers in poll-related acrimony, including one worker who sustained injuries during clashes on Friday and succumbed to them a day later on the day of the polls.
But perhaps the tragedy of poll-related violence multiplied its manifestation many times over by causing collateral damages to women and children who had no role to play in this unabashed and bare-knuckle fight for grassroots territorial control in Bengal’s countryside. Two children, a brother-sister duo, sustained grievous injuries in the Kashipur area of Bhangar in South 24 Parganas on Saturday morning when they tried to fiddle with live crude bombs lying on the road, mistaking them to be playthings. The bombs were leftovers of clashes between ISF and TMC workers which took place in the area on Friday night. The injured children were transferred to a hospital in Calcutta.
In the Malpaharpur Gram Panchayat area of Tarakeswar in Hooghly, Chandana Singh, daughter of an Independent candidate was left battling for life after she was shot in the head. The family alleged that TMC-sheltered goons aimed for the candidate’s son but the bullet hit his daughter who was standing close by.
While in Shamsergunj, Murshidabad, a female voter sustained bullet injuries during political clashes which kept the region on the boil since voting began, in a bizarre turn of events at Fulmalancha area of Basanti in South 24 Parganas, Anisur Ostagar, a TMC worker and brother of the local party candidate died of head injuries while standing in the voting queue after a crude bomb was hurled directly on him by miscreants supporting an Independent candidate. The incident happened when bombs were being indiscriminately hurled at each other by the two sides outside the poll booth, even as people stood in queue to cast their votes.
Besides the incidents of political savagery, widespread allegations were leveled by opposition parties of rampant electoral malpractices like casting of false votes, snatching of ballot boxes and even setting ballot papers ablaze from various corners of the state. Snatched ballot boxes were thrown into water bodies and drains in multiple districts by both poll manipulators and angry voters who dumped them as a mark of protest against those malpractices. A BJP candidate in Dinhata in Cooch Behar was seen pouring water inside sealed ballot boxes alleging rampant false voting by the ruling Trinamul Congress.
But it was the alleged joint failure of the central and state armed forces to keep the violence in check which sparked the war of words from both political parties cutting across the board as well as the state election commission. The fact that only 660 companies of CAPF could be deployed on the polling day instead of the 827 companies requisitioned by the SEC before the Union home ministry allowed commission chief Rajiva Sinha to look obliquely at the central forces for being unable to respond quickly to violent political outbreaks in different parts of the state and their delay in arrival and subsequent deployment.
“We had submitted our requisition for forces on the 25th of last month. The deployment could have been smoothly done if the forces had arrived by the 27th. We would not have faced these problems today,” Sinha said.
Desperate to shrug violence responsibilities off his shoulders, Sinha’s comments were bizarre to say the least: “I cannot take guarantee for who is going to shoot whom.”
“The job for maintaining ground level security lies with the security forces, not me. My job is to only oversee their arrangements,” said the commission chairman who moved till the Supreme Court to resist central forces' deployment in the rural polls.
