Despite Mamata underplaying violence, voices of sanity emerge in TMC

Sumanta Ray Chaudhuri
Kolkata, July 15 (IANS) With the elections to the three-tier panchayat system in West Bengal ending with unprecedented violence and bloodbath with the death toll already touching 44, there seems to be a tussle within the ruling Trinamool Congress on the violence issue.

One section within the Trinamool Congress while calling the casualties unfortunate, has stuck to their argument that the extent of violence had been sporadic and limited to specific and a minimum number of pockets. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and the state Trinamool Congress spokesman Kunal Ghosh were the two most vocal voices in favour of this argument.

On the other hand, a section of heavyweights, but without much voice within the party in recent times, have become vocal and seem to be in a mood of self-introspection over the bloodbath.
 
After the trend was clear on Wednesday evening that the Trinamool Congress was heading for a thumping majority Mamata Banerjee met media persons where she expressed condolences over the violence- related deaths and announced compensation and Home Guard jobs for the families of the deceased.
 
However, soon she changed her tone and said that West Bengal was deliberately projected in a bad light where sporadic incidents of violence have been blown out of proportion.
 
"There has been polling in over 71,000 booths and incidents of violence have been reported from a maximum of 60 booth areas. Even the violence there was planned to show the state in a bad light. In states like Tripura and Uttar Pradesh, the situation gets worse on polling days,” the chief minister said.
 
Kunal Ghosh went a step ahead in claiming the sporadic violence in the polls has been deliberately blown out of proportion by the BJP in order to divert attention from Manipur which had been burning with ethnic clashes for quite some time. Ghosh also accused a section of the media for being a party to this attempt to create an anti-Trinamool Congress narrativer.
 
The leaders of the opposition BJP, CPI(M) and the Congress have claimed that this violence and clashes have aggravated due to the inaction of the state election commission and the denial-mode of the state administration in refusing to accept the reality.
 
While the top leadership seems to be in denial mode about the bloodbath, a note of disagreement seems to be surfacing from a section of the ruling party leadership on this count.
 
One vocal voice is that of actor-turned-politician and the state minister in charge of the tourism department, Babul Supriyo, who felt such incidents of violence on the part of the ruling party were unnecessary when the Trinamool Congress would anyway have won the rural civic polls He also expressed apprehension that such acts of violence by a section of the ruling party activists would actually give political mileage to the opposition in the elections to come.
 
A similar note of dissent has surfaced from another actor- turned-politician and three-time Trinamool Congress legislator Chiranjit Chakraborty who said that if victories are achieved through violence, they do not reflect the confidence of the people in the victor. “Such victories are pointless. It is impossible to stick to power for a long time through such actions if the common people ultimately revolt silently,” he said.
 
Seniormost party legislator Abdul Karim Chowdhury, who has been sidelined of late in the party because of his frequent notes of dissent, feels that it is unfortunate that the ruling party has to depend on violence instead on having faith in the people for victory. “Even if the victory has been achieved, it becomes meaningless following the loss of so many lives,” he said.
 
In fact, before the panchayat polls Trinamool Congress national general secretary and Lok Sabha member Abhishek Banerjee cautioned the party workers to refrain from violence and bloodshed. But when it came to the day, the same picture of violence, clashes and loss of human lives emerged which unfortunately has become a tradition of West Bengal over the years.