West Bengal: Campaign Nears end for Bye-Elections in 4 Assembly Constituencies

Kolkata: As the COVID-19 infection rate increases in West Bengal after the festival season, the state is gearing up for bye-elections on October 30, to be held in four Assembly constituencies  -- Khardaha (North 24 Parganas), Dinhata (Cooch Behar), Shantipur (Nadia), and Gosaba (South 24 Parganas).

In Khardaha and Gosaba, the incumbent Trinamool Congress MLAs passed away due to COVID, while the Shantipur and Dinhata seats fell vacant after the elected MLAs, who were also Lok Sabha members, decided to remain MPs. In all four constituencies, TMC, Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left Front have put up candidates. The Left Front is currently without representation in the Assembly and is looking forward to these bypolls to open their account.

In Khardaha, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has fielded a youth activist Debojyoti Das, who is with the Democratic Youth Federation of India. He is being widely supported by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), which organised a large rally in his support.

Das, popularly known as Subho “is a known face in the district, a veteran of the student and youth movement of the district. Even the opposition candidates acknowledge this,” said Rabin Parui, a hawker working with CITU near the Khardaha railway station.

With COVID protocols in place, big rallies are prohibited and only small contact programmes are being held in all four Assembly constituencies on behalf of the Left Front.

However, in each of the four Assembly segments, an “invisible terror” of the ruling TMC looms large over the other contesting candidates, alleges Rabin Deb, a central committee member of CPI(M). Deb recently visited the office of the chief election officer of the state and urged him to take steps to guarantee a “safe and fair” democratic process.

In all, 1,441 booths where elections will be held on October 30, central forces would be deployed and all movements will be tracked through CCTVs. A total of 92 companies of central forces have been deployed in the state.

Another issue attracting the wrath of the opposition parties is the presence of large number of “outsiders” in constituencies where elections will be held. Despite repeated condemnation, no strong action has been taken so far by the election commission.

In Shantipur of Nadia, where CPI(M) has fielded Shoumen Mahato, the party alleged that under the “guidance” of the local TMC MP Mahua Moitra, a large number of “outsiders” from Karimpur had  entered Shantipur to “influence the voting process”.

TMC has fielded Braja Kishore Goswami, a member of the Baro Gossain family as their candidate from Shantipur. This area was an epicentre of the bhakti cult movement and TMC is hoping to make use of the legitimacy of the Gossain family associated with the cult to attract votes.

The BJP (whose candidate won the seat in the previous elections but decided to keep his MP seat), on the other hand, has been organizing various meetings highlighting the attacks on Durga Puja celebrations in Bangladesh to mobilize support. Shantipur is a border town and is seen by the saffron party as a fertile area for testing Hindutva ideology in the state.

The story is much-the-same in Dinhata, where TMC is attempting to cover the ground it lost to BJP in the last elections. The BJP MLA held on to his Lok Sabha seat, creating the necessity for bye-elections here. The carnage in Bangladesh is the main rhetoric being used by the party this time.

The Left Front has fielded All India Forward Bloc’s Abdur Rauf here, who has pushing secular principles and has brought issues of development, and excesses of the Border Security Forces in the border areas, as his poll plank.

In Gosaba, where elections are being held due to the death of the earlier TMC MLA, Revolutionary Socialist Party has fielded its leader Anilchandra Mondal in the Sundarbans. Small group meetings have been the campaign technique of the Left Front, CPI(M) local area committee secretary of Gosaba told Newsclick. 

Gosaba has so far remained outside BJP’s reach, though the party’s vote share increased in the last elections.  BJP here has fielded an alleged history-sheeter and mafia Palash Rana, known for being involved in illegal export-import business in the area. He, too, has made the Bangladesh violence his core election issue.