Explained | How will Sitalkuchi firing deaths, a murder and lynching of Bihar cop shape Bengal elections

Voters outside a polling booth in Jangipra constituency of West Bengal. The states has four more phases of polling to go. (File Image: Twitter CEO West Bengal)

On the morning of April 10, during the fourth phase of the bitterly contested assembly elections in West Bengal, a mob allegedly surrounded central forces in Sitalkuchi, Cooch Behar, beat up poll officials and tried to snatch rifles from the jawans of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF).

As the miscreants marched menacingly towards the security forces, ignoring their commandant’s efforts to pacify them, jawans allegedly fired in self-defence, fatally wounding four troublemakers. The violence followed Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s provocative outburst against central forces and her call to her supporters go gherao them.

In a separate incident of political violence, another person lost his life. Meanwhile, in Uttar Dinajpur, a police officer from in Bihar was allegedly beaten to death when he was searching for stolen bikes.

The violence has intensified Hindu-Muslim polarisation in the volatile state. The victims of CISF firing were Muslims, while the casualty of the political violence was a scheduled caste Hindu and the deceased Bihar police officer was also a Hindu. Further, those nabbed by the security personnel for the murder of the scheduled caste Hindu and the Bihar police officer were all Muslims.

Political violence, booth capturing or loss of lives in West Bengal is nothing new but political outfits are fishing in troubled waters in the bitterly contested election.

We look at the political ramifications.

The direct fallout of the violence will be polarisation along religious lines. The churn has already begun. TMC has started appealing to the minorities to vote for Banerjee, saying only her party can save them from BJP and its central forces. Banerjee has spoken to the family of the deceased, while her nephew and heir-apparent Abhishek Banerjee has accused Modi-Shah duo of having blood on their hands.

The remaining four phases of the election will cover the districts of Malda, Murshidabad, the Dinajpurs, North 24 Pargana, Purulia, Kolkata, Burdwan and Nadia. In Malda and Murshidabad, a sizeable section of Muslims side with the Congress but TMC would be looking to gain some seats from the Congress.

Further, in some of the assembly segments of North 24 Parganas, Nadia and in Dinajpur, minorities will be a decisive factor. And this is where TMC is looking to gain by consolidating votes.

In a 2019 CSDS post-poll survey, 12 and 10 percent of Muslim votes were cornered by the Congress and the Left. While both parties had attempted to wean away from the minorities by tying up with Abbas Siddiqui’s Indian Secular Front (ISF), the polarisation will lead to a loss of votes.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Lokniti-CSDS’ post-poll survey found that TMC got 70 percent of Muslim votes. This time the party is trying to garner the support of 85 percent of Muslim voters.

But the attempt to polarise minority votes has led to counter-polarisation from the Hindu right by BJP. Banerjee already faces allegations of minority appeasement because of stipends to Imams, her presence at religious events during Ramzan and Eid. BJP rallied a section of Hindus after she declared that she would attend Iftaars and that if a cow gives milk, one has to be prepared for its kicks as well.

In fact, as the TMC leader addressed a press conference, speaking to the families of the deceased, BJP’s IT Cell head Amit Malviya attacked the chief minister on Twitter saying, “Mamata Banerjee’s sympathy for the dead depends on the faith of the person who killed”.

He was alluding to her initial silence after the death of Anand Burman, a first-time voter who was shot dead in the same constituency where four people were killed in firing by security forces. Home minister Amit Shah, whose resignation was demanded by Banerjee, accused her of vote-bank politics as Burman was a Hindu Rajbanshi. Later, the TMC supremo included Burman’s name while paying tribute to “martyrs”.

The Rajbanshis are original inhabitants of what is known as north Bengal comprising Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, Coochbehar and Uttar Dinajpur districts. In the phase V of the voting, scheduled on April 17, assembly segments in Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling go to the polls. The Rajbanshis, who are one of the biggest scheduled caste groups in the state, form around 15-20 percent of the voters in some of these constituencies. The community also has a presence in pockets of Dinajpur, which is yet to go to the polls.

So, the BJP, which had the support of about 61 percent of the scheduled caste voters in 2019, might see a substantial increase in their support. And it’s not just the Rajbanshis; they have the Matuas to give them that boost as well.

The Matuas are the largest scheduled caste community in the state. A substantial portion of the Matuas had to leave their ancestral homeland, first in East Pakistan due to the riots and later in Bangladesh following the sporadic Hindu-Muslim strife. The community started moving towards the BJP after the saffron brigade brought in the Citizenship Bill in 2016. The passage of the bill triggered widespread, at times violent, protests in the state. Mobs set fire to railway stations and trains in areas dominated by Muslims, with law enforcement agencies being accused to doing little to control the situation. This created a fear psychosis of sorts among the members and made them stick with the BJP.

The Congress-Left-ISF alliance will see a split in its vote. Left cadres and supporters, who were at the receiving end of political subjugation and violence after TMC’s rise are also expected to support the BJP.

In fact, a report by Deepankar Basu and Debarshi Das, published in The Wire, says that every percentage point loss in the Left’s vote in 2019 polls coincided with a 0.89 percentage point gain by the BJP.

CSDS post-poll survey also points out that 39 percent of traditional Left voters switched to the BJP. In a two-way race between the BJP and the TMC, the Left votes which had migrated to the BJP will stay intact and may even increase.

Between 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Left’s vote share fell from 29.9 percent to around 7.5 percent—a drop of more than 22 percentage points— while the share of the BJP jumped from 17 percent to 40.2 percent, a gain of 23.2 percentage points.

West Bengal has a substantial number of voters from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. While Howrah has already voted, there’s a large concentration of Hindi-speaking voters in Paschim Burdwan, North 24 Parganas and North Kolkata. The lynching of the police officer from Kishanganj along with TMC’s constant outsider jab against Hindi-speaking voters in West Bengal would make a substantial portion of them side with the BJP. It hasn’t helped the matter as all those arrested for the murder are people belonging to the minority community.

In such a surcharged atmosphere, West Bengal will vote for the remaining four phases and all the eyes are on the Election Commission as it faces a challenge to ensure smooth and peaceful voting.