CALCUTTA, 11 May 2004 — West Bengal went to the polls yesterday amid an unprecedented row between the Election Commission and Biman Bose, chairman of the ruling Left Front.
A state government spokesman said four people were killed in stray cases of violence in rural areas of Midnapore, Murshidabad and Birbhum where Marxist heavyweight Somnath Chatterjee is in the fray.
More than 40 percent of voters cast their votes by the afternoon amid heavy security arrangements made by the Election Commission for free and fair elections in West Bengal under Marxist rule for 27 years.
While polling across the Left Front-ruled state was by and large peaceful, the commission filed a criminal case against Bose for inciting Marxist cadres to assault polling officials and obstructing elections.
Yesterday’s elections in 42 Lok Sabha constituencies pitted Left Front candidates against Trinamul Congress, Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party nominees trying to storm the communist bastion. The communists won 29 seats in 1999.
Defying the searing heat, voters stood in long queues in Calcutta and elsewhere in the state — including remote parts of Purulia and Bankura which are in the grip of an ultra-left insurgency — to exercise their franchise.
Among those who cast their votes in the Bengal capital were 89-year-old Jyoti Basu, who set a national record as India’s longest serving chief minister, and his successor Buddhadev Bhattacharya.
Armed clashes between Marxist and Trinamool Congress cadres erupted in the Calcutta (South) seat from where Mamata Banerjee, federal minister for coal and a staunch ally of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, is trying to get re-elected.
Banerjee accused Marxist cadres of terrorizing Trinamool supporters and jamming scores of polling booths to prevent them from voting.
But the polling was overshadowed by a case lodged by chief electoral officer Basudev Banerjee against Bose with the police. If found guilty, he could be imprisoned for up to five years.
On Sunday, Bose charged Election Commission observers in West Bengal with overstepping their limits and exhorted Marxist cadres to “grab them by the collar and drag them to the nearest police station”.
Responding to TV footage of Bose’s statement, Deputy Election Commission A.N. Jha accused him of “deliberately provoking and interfering with the electoral process with a view to vitiate it.”
Besides filing a criminal case against Bose, the commission has threatened to countermand elections across West Bengal and order re-polling.
Battle lines between the Left Front and commission were drawn after a special observer was sent to West Bengal to stop what opposition parties describe as “scientific rigging” with the connivance of state government employees.
The commission debarred as many as 10 senior police officers, including three Indian Police Service officers, from election-related duties for being too close to the Left Front.
The commission deployed three Indian Administrative Service officers from outside the state in each of the 42 seats to keep an eye on West Bengal cadre officials.
There were daily exchanges between Bose and EC’s special observer, Afzal Amanullah, culminating in the firebrand Marxist’s directive to cadres to manhandle poll observers.
Bengal’s home-grown communist have ruled the eastern Indian state for a record 27 years winning six successive provincial elections.
