BJP TODAY

May 1--15, 2003 - Vol. 12, No. 09

CPI(M)'s fraud on the eve of Panchayat elections in West Bengal
BJP President threatens public agitation

The BJP has strongly condemned the CPI (M) for its flagrant malpractices on the eve of Panchayat elections in West Bengal, which threaten to turn the entire electoral exercise into a farce. CPI(M) cadres have unleashed a reign of pre-nomination terror all across rural Bengal and manipulated to get candidates of their party elected "unopposed" in as many as one fifth of the total seats. This "victory" was achieved through the simple expedient of the CPI(M)'s musclemen forcibly preventing the candidates of the Trinamool Congress- BJP alliance from filing their nominations.

The last date of fiting nominations was April 16. However, according to reports received by the BJP's State unit until April 17, in nearly 12,000 out of a total of 56,000 seats, the CPI(M) candidates were the only ones to file nomination papers Mamata Banerjee, president of the Trinamool Congress, has stated a higher figure of 18,000. The alliance candidates were beaten up, their nomination papers were snatched away, and in some cases they were even kidnapped. All this was done so openly that both Chief Minister Shri Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and CPI(M) State secretary Shri Anil Biswas had to issue appeals to their party's local units to allow other parties to file their nominations. But these appeals were half-hearted, came close to the last date of nominations, and, in any case, were completely ignored by the CPI(M)'s local functionaries.

It is clear why the communists have yet again resorted to their well-known strategy of electoral manipulation. The popular mood in rural Bengal is clearly against the Left Front. The decision of the Trinamool Congress and BJP to fight the Panchayat elections together has created a lot of enthusiasm among the people. The CPI(M)'s defeat in a majority of the seats is a certainty in a free and fair election.

The BJP demands that election in all the "unopposed" the seats be nullified and fresh nominations be called in those seats. Trinamool Congress and the BJP MPs will raise this issue in Parliament. "If the State Government does not respond positively to this demand, we will have no alternative to launch a public agitation", Shri Venkaiah Naidu said in a statement.