KOLKATA
According to veteran political observers, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has reaped rich dividends throughout her political career from her ability to sell her image as the persecuted underdog fighting against far larger opponents. Even then, when she told her lakhs of supporters on 21 July—which her Trinamool Congress celebrates as Shaheed Divas or Martyrs’ Day—that the BJP government at the Centre had sent “154 fact-finding teams to Bengal in the past two years to harass her”, the number quoted left observers mystified.
The fact remains that since May 2021 when the Trinamool Congress won the state for the third time, the BJP government at the Centre and the party have been sending team after team to West Bengal to investigate the goings-on in the state. “While the Central government has sent its teams to probe allegations of defalcation of funds from Central schemes, the BJP has been very active as well,” says Biswanath Chakraborty, a political watcher and political science professor. “The idea is to keep giving wide publicity to the visits and keep the issues alive before the people,” he adds.
BJP insiders say that the idea is to chip away at Mamata Banerjee’s support base comprising women, Scheduled Castes and Tribes and the minority community. BJP leaders are taking pains to point out that most of those killed in election violence were from these three segments.
Since the 2021 Assembly elections, the Scheduled Caste Commission, led by chairman Vijay Sampla and vice-chairman Arun Haldar, has come to the state multiple times and has been vocal about the “torture faced by the SC community in West Bengal”. The National Commission for Women also visited the state.
Soon after the Panchayat elections earlier this month, it was the BJP which took the lead. It has sent fact-finding teams to West Bengal to investigate allegations of violence and intimidation against its workers and supporters in the aftermath of the recent rural polls. The party has alleged that the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) is responsible for the violence, and that the state government is not doing enough to protect its citizens.
The BJP’s fact-finding teams have visited several violence-hit areas in West Bengal, and have spoken to victims and witnesses. In the past 10 days, the BJP has sent three teams. First was the visit by a team of women MPs led by Saroj Pandey, Kavita Patidar, Rama Devi, Aparajita Sarengi and Sandhya Roy.
The team met the family members of a minor girl in Hanshkhali in Nadia district, who died after being allegedly gang-raped by Trinamool supporters earlier in the month. The team slammed the administration for failing to ensure the safety and security of women in the state.
“Atrocities against women in West Bengal are beyond words. A minor girl was brutally raped and murdered. This proves the administration has failed to ensure the safety and security of women. This is a shameful incident,” Pandey told reporters after meeting the family members.
Reacting to Pandey’s comment, TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh dubbed the allegations as “baseless”. “The women of the state are safe and secure in West Bengal under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee. The BJP is quick to send teams to West Bengal but never bothers to send similar teams to Uttar Pradesh, where rape cases were reported from Hathras and Unnao,” he added.
Then came the more-high profile visit by the MP fact-finding team led by former Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, with members being former top cop Satyapal Singh, Rekha Verma, ex-DG Brij Lal and Dr Rajdeep Roy.
The BJP fact-finding team suggested in its report that all cases of violence be investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) under the monitoring of the Calcutta High Court. The panel also recommended that all bomb blast cases needed to be referred to the National Investigation Agency for probe.
“The State Election Commission and State Election Commissioner shockingly failed in maintaining the constitutional sanctity of a free and fair election,” the party probe panel concluded about the alleged “biased” role of the poll conducting body and its chief, “thereby compromising its integrity and neutrality”. “Rather, they were accomplices in the violence led victory of TMC”, stated the report, which was submitted to party president J.P. Nadda on Wednesday.
“We had the misfortune of witnessing a rather perverse and shameful picture of democracy under Mamata Banerjee in Bengal,” Prasad later stated at a press conference in Delhi. “We noticed a sickening symbol of shameful democracy in the elections,” he added.
The last was the team of Schedule Caste MPs led by Vinod Sonkar. The other members of the team were Suresh Kashyap, Vinod Chawda, S. Munnuswamy and Manoj Rajoria. “Violence is nothing new in Bengal. Be it the Lok Sabha, Assembly or Panchayat elections, violence is routinely seen. That is why our party president J.P. Nadda has sent us to probe the instances on the ground and send him a report,” Sonkar said in Kolkata.
The TMC has denied the BJP’s allegations, and has accused the party of trying to create a false narrative of violence. The TMC has also said that the BJP is trying to divert attention from its own poor performance in the panchayat elections.
“Received the report by the BJP fact-finding team, constituted to inquire into the incidents of violence during the panchayat election in West Bengal. The state government’s arrogance and utter disrespect for democratic processes are dismaying. The BJP will continue to fight for the people’s voice in West Bengal in a democratic way,” tweeted Nadda along with a picture of the committee members handing him the report.
The common factor behind all the visits is the wide publicity that is being generated, first during the visit, and then later when the reports are being submitted to BJP national president J.P. Nadda, who formed the fact-finding committees. Women and Scheduled Caste groups like the Matuas play a major role in Mamata Banerjee’s win. With signs of the minority community’s growing disenchantment with the Trinamool, the BJP is hoping that its efforts will help it achieve Amit Shah’s target of 35 Lok Sabha seats from the state in the 2024 general elections.