Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: May 14, 2003
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb
Bhattachar-jee has described the blood- splattered three-tier Panchayat
polls that took place in the State on May 11 as "more or less peaceful".
If this statement strains credulity, his justification for it is even more
incredible. Of the 17 poll-bound districts, he said, only three were affected
by violence-Nadia, Murshidabad and 24 Parganas. And among the official
death toll of 20, he claimed six were CPI(M) workers.
This is as if to say the loss of
lives of CPI(M) cadre acts as a leveller, absolving the Left Front Government
of the charge of systematic brutalisation of Opposition candidates, of
which the roughing up of State BJP leader Tapan Sikdar and his associates
by Left lumpens in the run-up to the polls was only a part. Taking the
cue, State Election Commissioner Ajay Sinha has declared the number of
dead to be "quite normal" given the State's "three crore voters".
If, however, numbers are to tell
the story, they happen to be stacked against the Marxists. Pre-poll brutality
claimed around 42 lives and injured many more. Unofficial estimates put
the number of dead on polling day at over 20 and those injured at over
100. The police had to fire 29 rounds, apart from resorting to lathi- charge
and teargas shelling, to quell disorder. Repolling, called in nearly 100
booths, saw eight more die in unabating clashes. Add to this the fact pre-poll
terror ensured 6,002 contestants, mostly CPI(M), won unopposed. This is
way above the figures of 600 and 1,716 unchallenged seats for the last
two years. No BJP- Trinamool Congress candidate dared enter the fray in
as many as 23,843 of the 58,357 Panchayat constituencies, simply because
they had been threatened against filing nomination papers. Clearly, if
the Left wishes to effect a quantitative reduction of its guilt, it will
have to think again. No amount of excuses can atone for the numbing spectacle
the nation has just witnessed, and the State Government can only own up
to one of two charges: Its utter failure to stop blood-letting, or its
active role in it.
Evidently, the healthy showing of
the Opposition in the 1998 Panchayat polls-the Trinamool-BJP, with local
Congress support, bagged 42 per cent of the votes polled-had come as a
shock to the CPI(M). Scientific rigging thus gave way to primordial savagery,
from which even Left Front constituents such as the Revolutionary Socialist
Party and the CPI were not spared. As a result, the Trinamool Congress
is demanding Panchayat polls be overseen by the Election Commission, and
LF partners are rumoured to be rethinking their ties with a steamrolling
CPI(M). Yet these legitimate protests, within the Left and outside, provide
little optimism that it will not be business as usual in Bengal once memory
dims. For, the CPI(M)'s crushing of grassroots political activity is merely
part of its assault on larger democratic processes. West Bengal, like Bihar,
has long functioned in not-so-splendid isolation, seemingly cut off from
the rest of India and hence accountable to none. Caught in a political,
economic and ideological freeze frame, the State has been held hostage
to the Left's sole 'party political' objective: To cling to power, price
no object. The Panchayat polls have brought out in tragic relief its systematic
savaging of every sphere of human activity-from politics, academia, industry
to the police. The nation can ill afford to remain a mute spectator to
Bengal's forced surrender to red terror and the crumbling of its democratic
institutions. It is time the Marxists were made to understand that they
must govern democratically, or make way for those who can.
