The Opposition, which was left flat on its face with the ruling Trinamul steamrolling it in Sunday's civic elections across the state, described the electoral process in Bengal as a farce.
“The playing ground, the referee, everything was decided by the ruling party. Everyone has seen what happened in the civic polls. In very few places free and fair polls could be held. And in those places, even if marginally we have been able to increase our electoral strength,” said CPM central committee member Sujan Chakraborty. “It is also clear that people have turned themselves away from the BJP,” he said.
For example, in Burdwan’s Kalna municipality ward 10, out of the 2,747 votes polled, the Trinamul nominee, Anil Bose, received 2, 613 votes, the CPM’s Alok Kumar Saha got 72 votes and the BJP’s Gobindo Basu 62.
Among the major Opposition forces in the state, only the CPM has been able to hold on to the Taherpur municipality which it had won in 2015, while the Congress lost Joynagar-Majilpur, which allegedly witnessed massive rigging on Sunday.
Among the CPM nominees who were elected on Wednesday, one of the candidates, Sanjib Mullick, a four-time councillor in Birbhum’s Rampurhat municipality ward 17, has been in jail since Sunday, arrested for protesting against rigging and false votes.
Among the Opposition, the BJP had won 63 wards out of the 2,247 in the state, followed by the Congress in 58, the CPM in 46 and its allies Forward Bloc in three and RSP in one, while 117 seats were won by Independents, more than any one Opposition party.
“Many of the Independent candidates are Trinamul dissidents and it is most likely they will return to their party, like in Champdani,” said Congress leader Abdul Mannan. “The Trinamul has won in 11 seats, the 10 Independents are all from Trinamul and they will vie to find a place in the chairman’s council.”
On polling day, leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari had to stay inside his Contai residence as he wasn't a voter in the area. The Congress’ leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Chowdhury, had to run around to ensure voters turned out.
“Till now only the Leftists were the Trinamul’s target. This time, even Congress MPs were harassed when they came out on the streets. Despite conducting the polls with outsiders, why is the chief minister so scared?” asked Chakraborty.
BJP dissident and former governor of Tripura and Meghalaya Tathagata Roy described the results as “absurd, laughable, outcome of a gigantic fraud” while targeting national leaders of his party for the poor showing.
“Difficult to conceive how even Trinamoolis can rejoice over this result with a straight face. That said, something more needs to be said. The top four leaders (referring to senior BJP leaderas Kailash Vijaywargiya, Amit Malviya and others) had cannily conceded defeat on counting day to ensure the counting agents ran away or were shooed away. The results are a logical outcome of this,” Roy tweeted.
