The Election Commission of India (EC) on Sunday announced the date of the by-election to Kaliganj Assembly segment in Nadia after the seat fell vacant following the death of Trinamul Congress MLA, Nasiruddin Ahmad, in February, along with four other Assembly seats across the country.
The bypoll will be held on June 19. Counting of votes will be held on June 23.
Although outcomes of bypolls generally don’t leave much of an impact on the existing government, the untimely election in Kaliganj is set to throw challenges of various kinds for the ruling TMC, the BJP as well as the poll panel itself.
With less than one year to go before the Bengal Assembly polls, the ruling TMC would like to win the bypoll seat with a big margin as it has been facing uncomfortable questions in recent months after the Supreme Court invalidated the recruitment of over 25,000 teachers in state-run and state-aided schools.
“The party is not in a comfortable situation in the wake of teacher protests following the Supreme Court invalidating the recruitment of more than 25,000 teachers. It is not sure whether the teacher protests will have an impact on the Assembly election results. The Kaliganj bypoll will definitely show a trend,” said a ruling party leader.
“We are, however, confident of retaining the Kaliganj seat,” he said, adding that the victory margin was the main point of interest.
The BJP on the other hand would like to check if their policy on consolidating the Hindu votes was working at all.
“In Kaliganj, there are more than 40 per cent Muslim voters. So, the results would show whether the BJP was making any progress in consolidating Hindu votes. It would be interesting to see if the BJP gains in vote share the backdrop of recent Murshidabad riots, which the party used as a tool to corner the ruling party in Bengal,” said a political observer.
In the last Assembly polls, the BJP had secured 32 per cent votes. If the party gets around 40 percent votes, it can be said that the party’s divisive policy was working, said a BJP insider.
“The result of the bypoll is not that important for us. If we get around 40 per cent votes here, we will know that we do not need to change our campaign policy ahead of next year’s Assembly polls,” said a BJP leader.
Not only the BJP and the ruling party, the poll panel would also be under scanner as questions are being raised over the presence of ghost voters in the electoral roll.
During a special summary revision, the EC deleted more than 6,500 dead and shifted voters from the electoral roll. This figure is considered to be huge given that names of more than 2.5 per cent of the total of 2.52 lakh voters were deleted from the voter list.
“Deletion of up to 2 per cent names from the electoral roll does not raise eyebrows of the poll panel. But anything above that mark makes the EC suspicious about the electoral roll in a particular Assembly seat. This is the reason why the poll panel will closely monitor the election process in Kaliganj,” said a source.
Sources also said that despite deleting more than 6,500 names from the roll, the poll panel was receiving complaints that the names of many dead and shifted voters had not yet been deleted from the voter list in Kaliganj. It is being alleged that some booth-level officers (BLOs) did not do their job during the special revision of electoral roll that was carried out in April this year.
“Names of some dead and shifted voters have been identified in the revised electoral roll. The EC will track if votes are cast against these names. If that is so, the poll panel will consider that the entire polling process has been vitiated,” said a source.
