it is an election season and West Bengal is in the news for all the wrong reasons. There is violence. And more violence. Phase after phase, rally after rally, week after week. The state sends 42 MPs to the Lok Sabha and this time, election to these is being held in seven phases.
Every phase has had its own share of headlines for violence that was unleashed on and around the polling day. Murders, clashes, stonepelting, lathicharge, firing, arson, you name it and some corner of West Bengal witnessed it in this election season.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Trinamool Congress and the Left parties have been accusing each other of attacking and murdering their workers and supporters. This cycle of accusations and counter-accusations did not come up all of a sudden. But in the immediate context, it started in the run-up to the panchayat elections that were held in West Bengal last year. Media reports suggest that nearly 50 people died during these elections.
When the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal was accused of having failed to curb election-time violence last year, TMC’s Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien in a tweet said: “To all ‘newborn’ experts on Bengal #PanchayatElections in State have a history. 400 killed in poll violence in 1990s in CPI(M) rule. 2003: 40 dead. Every death is a tragedy. Now closer to normal than earlier times. Yes, few dozen incidents. Say, 40 out of 58,000 booths. What’s %age? (sic).”
Besides this, all the 1,354 onlookers who were injured in poll-related violence were from West Bengal.
Reports of the National Crime Records Bureau reveal that in the 18 years between 1999 and 2016, on an average West Bengal witnessed 20 political murders every year.
The highest was in 2009 when 50 murders were motivated by political reasons. This was followed by 2000, 2010 and 2011, each of which saw 38 political murders.
In August 2009, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-CPI(M)-released a pamphlet in which it accused the Trinamool Congress of having murdered 62 of its supporters between March 2 and July 21 that year.
Such allegations have routinely been levelled by all major political parties in West Bengal against each other.
But the history of political violence in West Bengal stretches to an era far beyond the past one decade. With the emergence of Mamata Banerjee and more recently of the BJP, it may today appear that the violence in West Bengal is between workers/supporters of TMC and BJP, with occasional instances involving Left parties.
Back in the 1980s and 90s, when neither the TMC nor the BJP was anywhere in Bengal’s political spectrum, it was the Left and the Congress who were often at loggerheads.
In 1989, the then Communist chief minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu presented some figures in the state assembly. His figures, as reported in a May 1989 report of India Today magazine, revealed that at least 86 political workers were killed in inter-and-intra-party clashes in West Bengal in 1988-89.
Read India Today report from 1989: West Bengal witnesses rise in political killings
“Of them, said Basu, 34 belonged to the CPI(M), 19 to the Congress(I), two to the Forward Bloc, seven to the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and the rest to other political parties and organisations,” the 1989 report said.
Back then, Congress leaders from West Bengal had submitted a memorandum to the President to impose President’s Rule in the state owing to rampant political murders of its workers, allegedly at the behest of the CPI(M). Congress’s memorandum claimed that 26 political murders were carried out in West Bengal within the first 50 days of 1989.
The then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had reportedly declared that “life has become unsafe in Bengal”.
2009 LEFT GOVT, 2014 TMC GOVT: DID BENGAL CHANGE DURING POLLS?
Data also shows that poll-related violence in West Bengal is not exclusively a product of Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress’s eight-year rule in the state. The state has weathered bouts of similar violence in the past too.
For instance, the 2009 Lok Sabha election was held at a time when West Bengal was ruled by a Communist government. In this election, a total of 5,315 poll-time offences were registered in the country. Of these, 18 per cent (i.e. 963) were registered in West Bengal.
In 2014, when Mamata Banerjee was the state chief minister, 931 election-time offences were registered in the state. The overall number of such offences in the country was 7,787.
Thus, while there wasn’t a major change in the number of registered offences in West Bengal between the two regimes, the state’s share in the national figure declined.
The Election Commission report does not categorise violent and non-violent offences separately.
PECULIAR FEATURE OF BENGAL
A feature that is peculiar to poll-time offences in West Bengal in the past two Lok Sabha elections (2014 and 2009) is that while most states primarily witness these offences before and on the polling day, in the case of West Bengal it seems these offences increased in the post-poll period.
The all-India data on offences recorded during election period in 2009 and 2014 show that most of the offences (65 per cent in 2009 and 74 per cent in 2014) were recorded in the pre-poll period. This was followed by offences on polling day and the least number of offences recorded were in the post-poll period.
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But in the case of West Bengal, at least 61 per cent election-period offences were recorded in the post-poll period (i.e. once voting was over) in the 2009 Lok Sabha election.
In 2014 Lok Sabha election, the figure was 44.68 per cent for post-poll and 40 per cent for pre-poll offences that were recorded.
In 2014, West Bengal had the highest number of polling stations that were classified as ‘critical’ by the Election Commission. The state had 77,252 polling stations, and nearly half of them (37,553) were termed critical.
WHAT HAPPENED IN LS POLLS 5 YRS AGO
Vulnerability of voters in West Bengal can be understood from the fact that in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the state had the second highest number of hamlets that were vulnerable to intimidation and use of muscle power during election.
Bihar topped this list with 20,179 vulnerable hamlets, followed by West Bengal where the figure was 18,810. Election Commission data show that in West Bengal, for every four vulnerable electors, there was one possible intimidator. This ratio of vulnerable electors to possible intimidators was among the highest in large states.
West Bengal had the highest number of polling stations that were classified as ‘critical’ by the Election Commission. The state had 77,252 polling stations, and nearly half of them (37,553) were termed critical.
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A polling station can be classified as ‘critical’ for a number of reasons like: more than 75 per cent votes being polled in favour of one candidate; it witnessed electoral violence in past elections; has a large number of missing voters; people are vulnerable to intimidation, among others.
This apart, West Bengal was also the state that had the highest number of violations of Mode Code of Conduct (MCC) in 2014.
In fact, 43 per cent of all MCC violations in 2014 were committed in the fertile and volatile political plains of West Bengal. Authorities registered 3,742 FIRs in West Bengal for MCC violations, which was second only to Andhra Pradesh (4,237).
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