FOR the state government, the dead are simply nameless, faceless numbers. It is widely known that panchayat elections in West Bengal have been witnesses to heinous poll violence. The "official" number of people killed varies from 19 to 56, with the chief minister, her nephew, the state election commissioner, police, and the media all giving different figures. The chief minister says it is 19, and as usual, the state election commissioner confirms it. The chief minister's nephew, who is the number two in the ruling Trinamool Congress, sings a different tune, claiming it is 35. The police report 48 corpses, while the court demands evidence. Finally, the media states it is 56. As we all know in Bengal, in any gruesome incident, the number of deaths on the official record is always much lower than what it really is.

Allegations of the State machinery being used despotically by the ruling TMC to stifle the voice of the political opposition are nothing new in Bengal. But this time, election rigging by different means has hit a new high. The Trinamool Congress, using the whole State apparatus and by means of unprecedented gangsterism and swindling, has turned the panchayat elections into a farce by making unbridled armed attacks on the people and causing poll-related mortalities to cross the half-century mark in a month.

The chief minister says, "All of these things are trivial issues." She has announced compensation of Rs 2 lakh to the families of those who have lost their lives. For her, the matter ends there. The state is in the hands of the brokers of "crony capitalism," who are guilty of plundering people's money everywhere. To loot the people, one needs power. The source of that power is the panchayat, municipality, state-central government, judiciary, bureaucrats-police-military, media, etc. So these have to be occupied by any means. And anyone trying to put up minimum resistance needs to be severely dealt with. They must face hostile propaganda, attacks, false cases, and persecution.

The formula is crystal clear. If people don't want to hand over this power democratically, then buy their consent with money. If even that is not possible, take it away by force. Keep the truth hidden from the people by buying the media, spreading one-sided or false propaganda. Change people's minds. If that doesn't work, then go straight for vote loot. 56 or even 100 corpses do not matter if they serve the purpose of winning votes. Who are these 56 people who have been killed in poll violence? Nine people died right at the time of the submission of nomination papers for the Bengal panchayat polls. Some more bodies were made to secretly 'vanish' because those people were hired from outside by the Trinamool to hurl bombs and shoot people but were killed in the process. It is tough to trace the accounts of all those who got killed. If the central forces were deployed promptly and in a planned manner, the loss of lives could have been checked.

STIFLING DEMOCRACY

The opposition shall not be allowed to submit nomination papers – that's the TMC-brand of democracy. So, build a gangster force. Gather the gunmen. When bombs were being thrown at random and the area was being sprayed with a hail of bullets - what was the need for CPI(M) activists to march and submit nominations in the midst of it! How dare they! So, even though young Mansoor Alam was shot dead by Trinamool-backed miscreants, the fault lies with the CPI(M). This happened because they dared to organise a march to submit nominations. In fact, this was the gist of the police's initial statement, faithfully echoed by some in the media. At Bhangar, the TMC-backed goons fired bombs and surrounded the BDO office during the filing of nominations. Initially, the BDO admitted that it was quite an unnatural situation and allowed 101 candidates of CPI(M) and ISF to submit their nominations. But in the evening, the state election commissioner announced those nominations to be invalid. They all are the tools of the State machinery run in the interest of crony capital.

Although at first, the governor refused to accept the proposed person as the election commissioner, one wonders at whose command did he change his mind and quickly appoint him to the post? If the governor was genuinely concerned about getting rid of poll violence, why didn't he, being the representative of the central government, fly to Delhi to effectively intervene when he saw that the centre was deliberately delaying the deployment of central forces? Why was he roaming across the state, full of sound and fury, but for all practical purposes doing nothing?

Furthermore, as we all know, crony capitalism spills over not only into the government and politics but also into the media. The responsibility fell upon the shoulders of the market-driven Bengal mainstream media to a) go for a news blackout of the election campaign of the Left and its allies while completely focusing on Trinamool-BJP, and b) delude the public with the idea that the governor and the BJP are the lone fighters for democracy in the state.

The goal was the direct transfer of anti-Trinamool votes into the BJP's kitty. The governor and the mainstream media took it upon themselves to resuscitate a rickety BJP. No measure was spared in scripting a false Trinamool-BJP binary to cover up key issues like the grand loot of funds at the panchayat level, siphoning off money from MNREGA funds, huge corruption in Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), plundering money meant for road-pond-canal renovation, and so on.

But today's crony capital does not rely solely on the political prowess of Trinamool or BJP. They have learned to rig elections in a perfect corporate style. Corporate companies such as Indian PAC (I-PAC), APCO International, Political Analytics India (PA-I), Niranjan, Political Strategist, Chanakya Promoters, etc., are conducting the entire electoral process on behalf of political parties that play second fiddle to crony capital. They hire highly educated data analysts, statisticians, writers, singers, advertising agencies, and also enlist the help of professional muscle men who have private bands of goons under their command.

It is these companies that are in charge of 'managing' the media, bureaucrats, police officers, police stations, and BDO offices - they "take care" of all of them. They are the ones who prepare the bulk of the candidate lists for these parties. They also conduct surveys to decide which booths may be allowed to vote normally and which booths must be captured and have the voting rigged. In the event of facing difficulties in capturing a booth, they make plans in advance for manipulating the vote count in the counting centres. Accordingly, bureaucrats, police, media, and crooks start playing their roles. They betray their official commitments and, in return, receive their "envelopes." This dispensation believes that money can buy conscience. That's why perhaps, for the first time in recent years, the polling personnel in this election were paid their due allowance in cash. In every election, the Election Commission sends the allowance money to the bank accounts of individual officers. So the question arises, why cash now? Presumably, because then there will be no difficulty in delivering the envelopes of I-PAC to their own trusted people, hence this arrangement. However, it is also clear that they could not buy most of the polling officers with cash.

MEDIA UNMASKED
On the day of the election, while booth capturing and looting of ballot papers were going on, the blood of the candidates/agents of the opposition party, along with common voters, was being shed. Suddenly, TV channels got busy with the governor, showing him going around from place to place to watch the polls. It is common knowledge that the governor has no constitutional right to roam on the streets on election day. Why did the Trinamool government send him around with cars, police, and a pilot? Why did the media spend so much time on this? Clearly, the objectives were a) to limit the last-minute voter's choice to a BJP-Trinamool binary, and b) to cover up the ongoing election fraud that included tampering of ballot boxes and ballot papers. For hours, the TV screen was occupied on one hand by the representative of the BJP, the governor, and on the other hand, by the spokesperson of Trinamool, a person whom Mamata Banerjee's police had arrested and jailed a few years back on charges of being an accomplice in the Saradha chit fund scam. People had to just sit tight and continue to listen to the mere war of words. This is how democracy is stabbed in the back in a state controlled by predatory capital.

Police, criminals, the election commission, and the media all acted in unison to rig the elections. Even after casting fake votes, the ruling party couldn't be sure of their victory and still feared that the Left opposition and its allies might be able to overturn their applecart. As a result, they had no other option but to order their "vote-contractors," I-PAC, and the likes, to engage in large-scale swindling at the counting centres. The governor, the notorious spokesman, and the media came out again to cover up the brutal gangsterism of Trinamool.

While gangsters, with the connivance of the police, were gathering inside and outside counting halls, snatching ballot papers stamped in favour of Left candidates, forcing the counting agents from opposition parties to leave the hall at gunpoint, and attacking those who dared to protest, an ugly lie suddenly began circulating in the news. A CPI(M) candidate, a marginalised, poor woman, had supposedly joined the Trinamool Congress soon after she was declared the winner. However, everyone knew the real truth - the ruling party's goons were making her do all this by kidnapping her child and threatening her that they would kill the child unless she obeyed them. No one in the media raised the question of why the woman's child was not being rescued. Her story was put centre stage just to divert people's attention from the loot at the counting centres.

To conceal this wholesale swindling, tampering, and rigging, the story of a spontaneous "green wave sweeping through the villages" is being spread by the loyal media. Some self-styled political commentators, donning the cloak of neutrality, are saying, "Trinamool would have won hands-down anyway, what was the need for all this?" This is exactly how the underlings fly the "banner of democracy" in a state controlled by crony capitalism.

RESULTS
Against the backdrop of these conditions, the panchayat elections were held in the state on July 8 to elect representatives to 63,229 seats of 3,317 gram panchayats, 9,730 seats of 341 panchayat samitis, and 928 seats of 20 zilla parishads. On July 11, the results were declared. However, even the state election commissioner himself cannot swear that the elections are over. It is doubtful whether the announcement of the results is "final and conclusive"! No candidate can say for sure whether he or she has won or lost. No one has ever seen such a strange election in the land of India - even after the election is over, and the results are out, fresh votes are being taken again on the orders of the court, and the candidates who carry the victory certificate are given notice that their victory is not final!

Despite vote looting, ballot box tampering, and murderous attacks on the opposition with the help of police and criminals, the electoral support for the Left and allied parties has increased by 12 per cent, and the votes for the favoured national party of the looters have decreased by 16 per cent. This has infuriated Trinamool, the second cohort of cronies. Backed by the police-media nexus, it has unleashed brute force to terrorise the masses that voted against them.

However, a few things have become clear in this election, that have not been seen in the last 12 years: the foundation of the ruling Trinamool has been terribly shaken; the mercenary forces of the Trinamool have been forced to retreat in many places in the face of militant people's resistance; as a result, the police had to be brought down in the middle of the night to arrest numerous opposition activists by framing false cases; even after so many incidents of election fraud, the votes of the Left and its allies have increased. Trinamool's vote has decreased, and BJP's vote has gone down much more sharply; the real character of the broker media, wearing the mask of neutrality, is becoming clear to the people ; it has become more evident that money cannot buy all people.

In 2023, the people have ultimately succeeded in shaking the base of this autocratic, plundering rule. In 2024, there will be a fight to remove BJP, the protector of the aunt-nephew duo, the apex of corruption. Then in 2026, there will be a fight to raze the edifice of autocracy. People need to hold on for three years – after an age of darkness, a new sunrise is coming.