Left Overtaking BJP, TMC’s Overdependence on Prashant Kishor: Experts Opine on KMC Results

Kolkata: Interesting observations about the Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections held on December 19 and results thereof declared on December 21 were made to NewsClick by persons from academia and civil society. The comments in some respects are different from the ones already in the public domain. There is unanimity that the pronounced victory of Mamata Banerjee-helmed Trinamool Congress was a foregone conclusion but the opportunity to hold free and fair elections was squandered away. The Left dislodging the Bharatiya Janata Party from the second position with a 2.68% higher vote share at 11.89%, was seen as a good sign and all attention would now shift to elections to 111 civic bodies early next year.

According to Moidul Islam, who teaches political science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences here, the election saw an issue-based campaign about the development of the metropolis. There was no attempt to inject religion or ideology in the campaign by BJP which, perhaps, realised it would be futile to do so in Kolkata. The Left’s rise is good for democracy and its next priority has to be to consolidate the modest gain and move forward, Islam told NewsClick. It was incumbent upon the ruling party to see that people exercised their right to franchise freely and peacefully.

Amitava Kanjilal, who teaches political science at Siliguri College, said despite the emphatic victory TMC top brass seems to have lost their confidence in devising a poll strategy on their own because of over-dependence on consultant Prashant Kishore. “The party appears to feel handicapped without PK. Also, its activists failed to live up to the note of caution sounded by the second-in-command and Mamata’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee against acts of violence, intimidation and rigging. Banerjee even warned of strong action, including expulsion, against those flouting the fiat.”

Judging by what happened on the polling day despite the highly influential party leader’s warning, Kanjilal said that “I am inclined to infer that TMC won and won handsomely but Banerjee lost.” This shows desperation on the TMC activists’ part to see the party returning to power in strength so their income from cut-money and syndicates is protected, he further observed.

BJP’s slide to third place is not surprising. Its dependence on turncoats from TMC has not paid any returns. That, perhaps, explains why it has applied brake on admitting defectors. The party’s failure to carve out an independent political space in West Bengal has left its supporters disenchanted, Kanjilal said, adding that the Left Front overtaking BJP was a welcome change.

Surajit C Mukhopadhyay, who teaches sociology at Amity University at Raipur in Chhattisgarh, sees relegation to third place with a 9.21% vote share as a setback for BJP not only in the city but, maybe, also in large parts of south Bengal. In the last summer’s Assembly election, it had garnered almost 29% vote share. It remains to be seen whether this show adversely impacts the party’s performance in the 111 other municipalities for which polls are due in the next six-eight weeks. For the citizens, it must be disturbing that what happened on the polling day was contrary to the ruling party leadership’s expressed intent to have free and fair polls, Mukhopadhyay observed and wondered: “Why should there be malpractices? Is it because of some allowance by the powers-that-be for the state police whose responsibility it was to enforce law and order?”

The performance of some TMC candidates seems to justify the charge; for example, nominees for wards 134 and 71 got 98.28 % and 91.83 % of the votes polled. Another TMC nominee got 91.8 %. The net result of TMC bagging 134 wards out of 144 wards is that there will be no officially recognised opposition in KMC as the rule stipulates that 10% seats have to be won by a party to qualify for opposition status.

Rajat Bandyopadhyay, associated with the cultural world over the years, said that the powers-that-be failed to honour its commitment to have free and fair elections. The electronic and print media, with the exception of some, has practically stopped telling the truth to the public. The language used these days by panelists in TV debates is just not acceptable. In a sense, they are also responsible for vitiating the electoral atmosphere in West Bengal; whichever election it is – panchayat, municipality, Legislative Assembly and Lok Sabha.

The only silver lining is that people now have started talking about electoral malpractices. Bandyopadhyay sees this as a sign of people’s belated awakening, but this has to gather momentum. “There has to be dialogue, dialogue and dialogue and people must be able to speak out their mind; only then there will be a break with the demoralising present,” he told NewsClick. Also, the civic body administration led by the mayor should be able to preserve its identity and exercise functional autonomy guaranteed to it under the relevant Acts. But, in practice what we see these days is the municipal corporation being coerced into being subservient to the state government, he observed.

Commenting on the scale of TMC’s victory, The Telegraph on December 22 quoted Subhamoy Maitra of the Indian Statistical Institute as saying: “There are various political reasons for that [the massive TMC victory] but a key factor certainly is offering to the poor programmes such as a universal basic income of some kind." The editorial in The Telegraph on December 23 observed: “But there is no denying the fact that her [Mamata’s] party’s welfare initiatives, especially those for the needy, seemed to have elicited an energetic public response. The rise in the Left’s vote share can also be attributed to the relief work that its cadre undertook during the pandemic-induced lockdown.”

Interestingly, Mamata has given a ‘national’ angle to her party’s show. She contended that three national parties – Congress, BJP and Communist Party of India (Marxist) fought against TMC and, therefore, the outcome has national implications. Political observers see this as a sort of justification for her ambition to play a role in the national political space.