KOLKATA: The CPI(M)-led Left Front, Congress and the Indian Secular Front (ISF) on Thursday jointly organised a rally here to protest against the violence in recently held panchayat polls in West Bengal.
CPI (M) state secretary Md Salim, Left Front chairman Biman Bose, senior leaders of other Left parties and those of the Congress and ISF were among 1000-odd people who took part in the rally that started from the Ramlila Maidan at Moulali to Esplanade, around two km away.
“The ruling TMC with the active support of the State Election Commission has murdered democracy in the name of holding panchayat polls where the Left and Congress candidates and their families were threatened and attacked,” Salim told reporters.
Ballot boxes were destroyed and ballot papers were snatched by the TMC goons, he alleged, asserting that the state’s ruling party did this as it was sure to lose had the panchayat polls been held in a free and fair manner.
The senior CPI(M) leader claimed that a discreet understanding exists between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee “and none is really bothered about ending the atrocities of the poor under the TMC rule in West Bengal”.
TMC state spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said sinking their ideology for the sake of power, the two ideologically different camps joined hands with the sole aim to defeat the TMC “by hook or crook”.
They are resorting to the “false narrative” of terror by the TMC although it was the ruling party workers who mostly died in the panchayat poll-related violence instigated by the Congress, Left, ISF and the BJP, he alleged.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that 19 people, mostly from her TMC, died in poll-related violence since the election date was announced on June 8.
Police sources, however, have put the number of fatalities at 38 but agree that at least 60 per cent of those who lost their lives were affiliated with the TMC.
Meanwhile, political analyst Sibaji Pratim Basu said the Muslim farmers supported the TMC in the 2006-07 Singur and Nandigram anti-land acquisition movement.
There are signs about ISF eyeing that segment of people because of preacher Pirzada Abbas Siddiqui as many Muslims are followers of Furfura Sharif, a holy place for Bengali Muslims.
Siddiqui, who belongs to the family associated with Furfura Sharif, formed the party ahead of the 2021 assembly elections.
“The ISF is seeking to emerge as an alternative to the TMC as evident in Bhangor-2 block where it throws a challenge to influential TMC leader Arabul Islam,” Basu added.
The ISF, which entered into an understanding with the Left and Congress before the 2021 assembly polls, won nine panchayat samiti seats and one zilla parishad seat in Bhangar in South 24 Parganas district.
It also won 66-gram panchayat seats in Bhangar and 23 in Kulpi.
Professor of political science, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Prof Maidul Islam told PTI that ISF has got mileage with its performance in the panchayat polls but it remains to be seen how it will capitalise on this in coming days.
“There is a perception among a section of minorities that the aspirations of young minority voters remain unrealised by non-BJP political parties who got their support in the past. Some of these people are of the opinion that ISF can fill the void,” Islam said.