Amid widespread violence and killings, rural West Bengal braces for the crucial three-tier panchayat polls on Saturday, which serve as a litmus test for the 2024 parliamentary elections and hold the power to reshape the state’s political landscape. Around 5.67 crore voters are likely to exercise their franchise to choose representatives for nearly 928 seats across 22 zilla parishads, 9,730 panchayat samities, and 63,229 gram panchayat seats.
Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee and the party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee led the party’s campaign while stressing the need to shun strong-arm tactics by its cadres and allow more democratic space to the political opponents to avoid the rerun of the 2018 rural polls, when it had won around 34 percent of the seats uncontested.
BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar, national vice president Dilip Ghosh, and leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari led the saffron party’s campaign, whereas state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and CPI(M) state secretary Mohammed Salim led their parties’ respective poll drives.
The Indian Secular Front (ISF), with its limited presence in parts of North and South 24 Parganas, too grabbed headlines as its leader and lone MLA, Nawsad Siddique, led the party’s campaign, which often resulted in clashes with the ruling TMC in Bhangor in South 24 Parganas.
Since the day the polls were announced on 8 June, widespread violence has been reported in various parts of the state, leading to the deaths of over a dozen people, including a teenager. A Congress worker was allegedly beaten to death by unidentified people in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district ahead of the panchayat polls in the state, police said on Friday. The incident took place in the Raninagar area, hours before Governor C V Ananda Bose reached the district to visit violence-hit areas there, a senior officer said.
West Bengal Governor C. V. Ananda Bose reached Murshidabad district to visit the violence-hit areas on Friday, a day before the rural polls in the state. He is expected to hold meetings with senior officers later in the day, a district official said. The governor reached Berhampore, the district headquarters, by train this morning and is expected to visit some places before returning to Kolkata this evening, he said.
Bose will visit places like Domkal, Khargram, Navagram, and Beldanga, where clashes among political parties have been reported in the run-up to the rural polls. Meanwhile, fresh violence was reported in the Ranninagar area of Murshidabad, another district official said. The governor has opened a ‘Peace Home’ at the Raj Bhavan to address the complaints of the common people. So far, 16 people have been killed in violence connected to the elections in the state, according to officials.
The polls to elect representatives for village councils will be held under the watchful eyes of central forces for the second time since the inception of the Panchayati Raj system in Bengal in the late Seventies. Nearly 65,000 active central police personnel and 70,000 state police personnel will be deployed for the polls, officials said.
