Voting for the Calcutta Municipal Corporation closed at the scheduled time of 5 pm on Sunday, but not before the Opposition parties had levelled serious allegations of voter intimidation and targeted violence by members and supporters of the ruling Trinamul Congress that came into the election as the runaway favourite.
According to agencies and sources in the government, turnout in Calcutta civic areas was around 52.25 per cent till 3 pm. The final figures are yet to be released.
On Sunday afternoon, outside the Burtolla police station in North Calcutta, flags and insignia of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party covered a tiny speck of the sky as supporters of the three Opposition parties came together in a feeble show of solidarity as the Trinamul’s thuggery at polling stations made a mockery of the poll process.
A few kilometres away at Salt Lake, the residence of the leader of Opposition, Suvendu Adhikary, was surrounded by a police force. It was the same at the MLAs' hostel at Kyd Street.
Except for the BJP none of the other two parties has any legislator in the incumbent Assembly.
Congressman Amitabha Chakraborty, who has seen many an election in the Bowbazar-Sealdah-Chowringhee areas from his days as a Chhatra Parishad leader _ and later on bore the brunt of the CPM’s might _ was assaulted by “outsiders” in Ward 45, which includes BBD Bagh, the city’s business district and former administrative headquarters from the Raj days, and has, among others, the state Governor among its list of voters.
Left Front protests at Baghajatin More against alleged TMC booth capturing Twitter: @ShabanaANI2
“The administration is doing the bidding of Trinamul Congress. A farce was allowed in the name of elections. Opposition booth agents were not allowed to take their seats. This is unacceptable,” said Sujan Chakraborty, CPM central committee member.
The Trinamul’s all India general secretary and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Bandyopadhyay waas ready with a counter. “If there is any documentary evidence of any Trinamul worker involved in any instance of voter intimidation or any other electoral malpractice, bring it to us. We will take action in 24 hours," he promised.
Neither of these three parties, the CPM, the Congress and the BJP, harbour any ambitions of getting to run the Calcutta Municipal Corporation in the near future. It is a given that the Trinamul will win at least 130 of the 144 wards, if not more.
Yet the intimidation of voters and polling agents belonging to the Opposition parties, the blindsidedness of the Calcutta Police led by the city police chief Soumen Mitra, who in 2016 had made an example of what policing during election season should be, continued.
Sunday’s expose of Trinamul tactics is not new to pollsters in Bengal. The record speaks for itself since the 2014 Lok Sabha, 2016 Assembly and 2018 panchayat polls, when as many as 20,000 Trinamul nominees to various panchayats across the state won uncontested.
Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar with wife after casting their votes on Sunday PTI Picture
The electorate in 2019 did warn Mamata Banerjee, when the BJP rose meteorically to bag 18 Lok Sabha seats. That vote was not so much for Bengal’s brand of Hindutva as much as it was to express anger for the denial of voting rights in 2018.
In the 2021 Assembly polls, Mamata made mincemeat of the Opposition, riding on her dole politics and the bogey of Hindutva that is a genuine threat. However, while the Trinamul elsewhere romped home, Mamata herself tasted defeat for the first time in over 30 years and had to take the by-election route to make it to the Assembly as third time chief minister.
In the Bhowanipore Assembly by-polls, the Trinamul machinery had worked quietly. But in the civic polls just under two months later, the ugly façade of the ruling party’s might was ripped apart.
Trinamul does not have any opposition outside. The opposition to the party is from within, its various factions. This factionalism works in two ways. One, it can work against the party; two, it can bring forth a competitiveness within warring sub-groups to prove who is the strongest. Calcutta on Sunday was witness to the might of different factions of the Trinamul each eager to outperform the other.