Following the three-tier panchayat elections in West Bengal, all parties participating have engaged in a verbal battle, accusing one another of being responsible for the violence that claimed 12 lives across many districts. Rajiva Sinha, the state’s election commissioner, has been blamed by the BJP for the killings, while the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the state’s current government, has been charged for stifling democracy.
In response, the TMC, which suffered the loss of eight supporters as a result of the unrest, has charged the opposition of planning the unrest and criticized the government’s security services for failing to safeguard voters. The BJP asserts that episodes of booth capture, voting manipulation, and bogus votes throughout the districts resulted in 15 political fatalities on election day. According to PTI, they further claim that TMC members participated in the seizure of voter and Aadhaar cards.
Suvendu Adhikari, the head of the opposition, and other opposition leaders have asked for free and fair elections to be held in accordance with President’s Rule or Article 355 to demonstrate their lack of confidence in the government. State ministers from the TMC have refuted these allegations, pointing out that the majority of polling places and areas where voting was smoothly conducted reported just a tiny number of incidents of violence.
The TMC spokesman asserts that the number of violent events and fatalities has drastically decreased compared to past elections, despite the fact that authorities have confirmed the deaths of eight TMC supporters and one worker from each of the BJP, CPI(M), Congress, and Indian Secular Front (ISF). The West Bengal Pradesh Congress president “congratulated” TMC leader Mamata Banerjee on winning the bloody rural elections in a caustic comment, implying that the votes were tainted by fraud.
The State Election Commission was accused by the CPI(M) of holding a fraudulent election, and the CPI(M) blamed the governing party for the fatalities. They claim that there were cases of voting-related thievery, but they also point out that the governing party’s power has decreased since the last rural elections. They call the elections a “very dirty affair,” and they assert that members of the governing party were behind the widespread violence.
