The cycle of violence and electoral malpractice in the recently concluded panchayat elections has unceremoniously positioned Bengal as the country’s only major state which continues to have a serious law and order breakdown during voting, having taken over from the likes of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh where poll violence is now mostly a thing of the past.

“There was a time in Bihar when poll violence and malpractice was rampant and a given. Those were the ballot paper days. But even then, the last violent elections in Bihar was in 1995 when Lalu Yadav was at the helm of affairs,” says a senior journalist, explaining how violence took a backseat with the winning party becoming secure in victory.

“Lalu,” says the journalist who closely tracks the politics of Bihar and UP, “did not need to intimidate voters or the Opposition for fear of losing elections. His political weight was such that the Opposition, too, did not dare to resort to coercive tactics because they feared violent retaliation.”

So what is it in Bengal? Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress has been ruling the state virtually unopposed since her first Assembly election victory in 2011 when she ceremoniously ended the Left rule of 34 years. Today, her party has over 220 MLAs in the Assembly while the strength of the principal Opposition, the BJP, is reduced to less than 70 following defections from the saffron camp to the ruling party in the aftermath of the 2021 state polls.

Yet, the recent panchayat elections, by definition held in the rural interiors of Bengal, saw vicious violence. Allegations of electoral malpractice kept pouring in from Opposition camps not just on the polling day, but, significantly, also during the long-drawn counting period of the rural polls which were themselves marred by widespread violence across the state.

Death toll near 50

The unofficial death toll since June 8, the day the polls were announced, on account of political clashes and poll violence has currently crossed the half century mark -- although chief minister Mamata Banerjee has put the body count at 19 – and signs of a truce between warring factions seem to remain a far cry in multiple pockets of rural Bengal. Significantly enough, the majority of victims belonged to the ruling party camp.

Poll fraud allegations on the day of polling ranged from false voting, voters’ intimidation, attacks on poll personnel and party agents, booth jamming to looting ballots, snatching of ballot boxes and dumping them in water bodies. Charges of using unfair means to win the polls during counting sessions included allegations against returning officers forcing Opposition candidates to accept loss following dubious means of counting.

The fates of two Naskars, both BJP candidates, is a typical example. Basudeb Naskar who contested from the Kalikapur II Gram Panchayat seat in the Sonarpur II block of South 24 Parganas, won. Just as his co-candidate from the adjacent seat, Shibdas Naskar. Both won by over 300 votes, each defeating Trinamul Congress rivals, as claimed by Basudeb’s election agent Aniruddha Naskar.

When ‘winners’ turn losers

But when official results were declared, both ended up losing. Aniruddha explains how.

“Suddenly the local Trinamul MLA stormed inside the counting centre along with the local police and a few party goons who began abusing our candidates with the choicest of expletives,” he says, adding that they even stopped the candidates from leaving the premises.

“They brandished firearms and gave us a choice: either the winning certificate or our lives. The local BDO did nothing to come to our aid since he seemed to be sharing a great rapport with the MLA. We chose to live and left the counting centre quietly since the threat looked serious,” Aniruddha recalls.

The aggrieved BJP nominees sent out an e-mail complaint to the state election commission and filed a report to their party leadership. Later, official data posted on the state election commission website showed that Basudeb and Shibdas had lost to their Trinamul rivals by a margin of 810 and 609 votes respectively.

State poll panel hauled up

The Bengal state election commission ended up being hauled up for failing to conduct free, fair and violence-free elections -- not just by the state government and Opposition parties but also by Raj Bhavan and Calcutta High Court. The poll panel has had to conduct re-polling in 696 booths and, in a quite unprecedented manner, ordered a re-poll in 20 more across the three districts of Howrah, Hooghly and North 24 Parganas even after the counting of votes got over.

Political observers agree that perpetuation of the culture of violence and fraud isn’t possible without the active patronage of the party in power. Like in Bengal, where the legacy of political violence exists from pre-Independence days. The Calcutta municipal elections which elected Subhas Bose as mayor was witness to violence as did the post-Independence regimes of the Congress, the Naxalite period and the Left Front.

Yet, how did the culture of violence change in Bihar over the 15 years since Lalu’s chief ministership? “Once you see a set of elections passing without coercion, the cadres lose touch. With two generations of violent cadres passing, the knowledge and the will to perpetrate violence also passes,” explains the senior journalist.

Bihar: Not to the extent of Bengal

But he adds a rider. “Little or no violence doesn’t quite mean that Bihar is free of electoral malpractice. Even in last state polls the RJD alleged that District Magistrates were forced to issue victory certificates to JDU candidates. But it doesn’t happen to the degree it happens in Bengal,” he says.

He admits though that it’s difficult to zero in on one reason behind the seemingly never-ending spiral of poll violence in Bengal. “In UP, the culture has changed, possibly because one party has become so dominant that it doesn’t need to do this anymore. It’s difficult to fathom why the TMC is doing this even when they are the ones getting beaten up. I think it’s the zealotry and over excitement of the cadres. It’s almost like, ‘what’s an election without violence!’ It’s a culture that feeds into itself. And it persists because the ruling party promotes it,” he says.

Sikha Mukherjee, senior journalist and political commentator, had another perspective to add, differentiating between the nature of violence and coercion witnessed during elections across the country. “One form of political violence is overt. But there’s also underlying violence which is integral to the country’s politics. The lack of open clashes in other states doesn’t mean violence is absent there. It’s overt in Bengal… Here you are not intimidated on caste lines because your primary identity is political. Identity politics gets played everywhere in India and politics along caste and religious lines can’t be played in Bengal by most political parties. But make no mistake, violence is a constant companion and underlying force in Indian electoral politics and in political life in India,” she says.

Desperation, lack of opportunities

But the bare-knuckle fight for what’s in effect territorial control of the rural hinterland also seems to stem from the under-developed opportunities Bengal has to offer, many believe. “Panchayat seats are meal tickets for grassroots workers of the ruling dispensation," opined BJP leader Swapan Dasgupta, adding, “They are the gateways to grassroots corruption and income source for the unemployed youth and their leaders. Hence the desperation to hold on to the seats and that’s why we see so much bloodshed.”

A pending litigation before the High Court questioning the fairness of these elections has hung a question mark on the future of the winning candidates, keeping the possibility open for the state’s high judiciary to countermand the polls in parts, if not in whole.

But as of now, the Trinamul has won hands down. Besides routing the Opposition in all 20 zilla parishads, the ruling party remained invincible, winning nearly 80% (2,641 of the total 3,317) gram panchayats and 92% (313 of the total 341) panchayat samitis as per results declared by the State Election Commission so far. The trend remains unchanged from results trickling down from the booths where re-poll was ordered by the Commission on grounds of malpractice and violence.