Mamata’s Pyrrhic Victory

Mamata would be gravely mistaken if she thinks that the 2015 civic elections are the trailer for an electoral sweep of the Assembly polls next year.

The results of the elections to 92 civic bodies across West Bengal, including the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), threw up no surprises. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) was expected to sweep the polls and it did so, winning 71 civic bodies. It won all seats in eight municipalities and its performance this time was much better than 2010 when it won 38 civic bodies, including the KMC. The 2010 civic polls set the TMC on its victory course in Bengal.

An ecstatic Mamata Banerjee said the results were “better than expected”. But actually, there is nothing much to crow about. Mamata and her men would be gravely mistaken if they think that, like the 2010 civic elections, the 2015 civic elections are the trailer for an electoral sweep of the state Assembly polls the next year. The primary reason is that this latest victory cannot be attributed to the popularity of Mamata and the TMC. People did not vote for the TMC because they like the TMC and support that party.

The 2015 civic polls will go down in the electoral history of Bengal as the most violent poll marked by widespread rigging, intimidation of voters and gross electoral malpractices by TMC goons and criminals at the behest of their party leaders. Admittedly, elections in West Bengal over the past few decades have never been free and fair. But the magnitude of malpractices and violence this time was unprecedented and made the Left, which had perfected the art of rigging polls, look like saints in comparison.

The large-scale malpractices could happen because civic polls are conducted by the West Bengal  State Election Commission and not the Election Commission of India (ECI). The state election commission is subservient to the state government and Mamata had, after many brushes with the former chief of the body who was an IAS officer, placed a pusillanimous state civil services officer as it head.

And this man acted more like a TMC functionary before and during the polls, allowing shameless display of muscle and power by the TMC. Polling officials—all state government employees—also did the TMC’s bidding and election observers (state government officers all) simply looked the other way or put on blinkers when violence and rigging took place. In the absence of central paramilitary forces, the police too played ball with the TMC.

But Mamata and the TMC cannot expect such a walkover during the state Assembly polls slated for next summer. That election will be conducted by the ECI and for many elections now, the ECI has been very strict about the way it conducts polls in Bengal. Apart from closely monitoring the election process and sending in observers from other states, the ECI will also send in central forces that, as in the past, will strictly enforce the law.

The strict measures that the ECI will enforce will surely bring it on a collision course with Mamata (as had happened in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls), but it is the ECI which will prevail. More so because the NDA government at the Centre will brook no attempt at foul play by the TMC. It will be interesting to see how the TMC fares when elections are much fairer than the civic polls of last month.

However, to attribute the TMC’s victory wholly to rigging and malpractices would be wrong. The TMC would have won a majority of the civic bodies even if polls would have been totally free and fair. And there are many reasons for that. One, this was a civic election and people vote differently for civic polls than they do in Assembly or Lok Sabha polls.

People are well aware that in order to get civic work done, the civic bodies should be run by a party that is also in power in the state. Civic bodies ruled by opposition parties are routinely starved of funds and, thus, cannot implement civic projects. Thus, people thought it would be wiser to vote for the TMC rather than other parties who would face hurdles posed by the state government. Ideology and likes or dislikes don’t come into play very much in civic polls.

And all said and done, in many places, TMC-led municipalities had done good work. This is also true in the case of the KMC—Kolkata looks much cleaner now than five years ago.

Another factor was the weakness of opposition parties—the Left, BJP and the Congress—that allowed the TMC to have a free run. The TMC benefited from the split in anti-TMC votes and only in places where a strong opposition candidate managed to consolidate all anti-TMC votes did the TMC lose.

This happened in some pockets of Bengal. But overall, so weak were the opposition parties that they could not even manage to post election agents in many booths. And the Opposition parties could not position themselves as viable alternatives to the TMC.

This is especially true in the case of the BJP which not only released a lackluster manifesto very late in the day, but also had no concrete promises to offer to the electorate. Only harping on the Sharada scam and corruption within and misdeeds of the TMC cannot take a party very far. In contrast, the Left managed to position itself as a strong opposition and a viable alternative to the TMC in a few places, especially in Siliguri in north Bengal, and was rewarded by the electorate.

The BJP improving its 2010 performance across the state (though it failed miserably to live to the promise of 2014 Lok Sabha polls when it garnered over 25% of votes across Bengal) is a positive sign. The BJP won seven wards in the KMC (up from 3 in 2010) and was a close runner-up in 38 wards, though an extrapolation of last year’s Lok Sabha results reveal that the party had led in 26 wards in Kolkata.

The BJP also won 82 seats in 36 municipalities across the state, an improvement from the 16 wards it won in 2010. Though the party squandered its chances this time due to infighting, lack of leadership and the absence of a concrete electoral battle plan, it appears that party leaders have learnt a lesson and are now joining ranks and gearing up to take Mamata head on. A re-charged BJP can be expected to pose a tough challenge to Mamata in next year’s Assembly polls.

A fallout of the TMC’s sweep in the civic polls is that Mamata has lost a lot of her moral authority. Her party may have posted a spectacular victory, but people of the state have realised how that victory was achieved. The Sharada scam, misgovernance and lack of development had already robbed Mamata of quite a bit of her sheen. Being seen as presiding over an army of goons and criminals who hold the law to ransom and make a mockery of democracy has robbed her of a lot of her moral authority. Her image has suffered.

Large sections of the people are angry with her for rigging the civic polls so blatantly. They have realised that she is as guilty, if not more so, of flouting democratic norms and laws like the Marxists before her who ruled over Bengal for 34 years and ruined the state. They will surely punish her when they get the chance next year.

Also, the Assembly elections will be a different ballgame altogether. The BJP may not have given the civic polls their due importance, but would surely not treat the Assembly polls so casually. The party’s central leadership, which stayed away from the civic polls, is surely expected to play an active role in next year’s polls. According to party leaders, the BJP central leadership has already asked the state unit to buck up and start preparations for next year’s polls.

Given this, Mamata will face a tough challenge indeed from the BJP next year and, with the ECI keeping a close watch and central security forces on the ground, battle 2016 will be a tough one for Mamata to win. At least it won’t be a cakewalk for her like the recent civic polls.