[Reader-list] Booth Capturing Determines Result in Byelection

[A. Mani]

Source: People's Democracy
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Jangipur Bye-Election:

18 Booths that Changed the Result!



ONLY 18 polling booths saved Congress candidate Abhijit Mukherjee to
scrape through with a wafer-thin margin in Jangipur Lok Sabha
bye-election in West Bengal. And, the results in these booths showed a
unique feature, defying all logic and in total discrepancy with the
overall pattern.


In Jangipur, Congress candidate defeated CPI(M) candidate Muzaffar
Hossain by a margin of only 2536 votes. Congress candidate got
3,32,999 votes while CPI(M) candidate got 3,30,383 votes. The seat
fell vacant after Pranab Mukherjee was elected President of India. In
2009, the senior Congress leader had won the seat with a margin of
nearly 1,30,000 votes. The vote share of Congress came down from 54
per cent in 2009 to 39.01 per cent in 2012, a drop of nearly 15 per
cent. CPI(M)’s vote share in this year’s election was 38.71 per cent.
In other words, the President’s son Abhijit Mukherjee won the seat by
a margin of only 0.30 per cent votes.



Another notable feature of the election was that BJP got more than
85,000 votes while two other parties, SDPI (24,691) and WPI (41,620)
polled considerable votes. Though the elections took place after
Trinamool Congress split from UPA at the centre and after Congress
walked out of the state cabinet, the TMC decided not to contest. The
formal explanation was ‘courtesy’ shown by Mamata Banerjee to Pranab
Mukherjee. In the absence of TMC, the extraordinary rise of votes for
BJP and other two political formations has attracted some attention in
political quarters.



CPI(M) has taken a lead in four assembly constituencies while Congress
in three. In 2011, Left Front won only one out of these seven assembly
segments.



All trends, however, took a U-turn in 18 polling booths in the two
village panchayats of Giria Sekendra area under Raghunathganj assembly
segments. This area has witnessed severe terror for last few months
and most of CPI(M) activists had to flee. Left Front candidate could
not enter this area during the campaign. In these booths, CPI(M)
agents were not allowed to be present. Congress hoodlums captured the
booths and freely voted for hours. The villagers were forced to remain
outside the booths. The booth capturing was even recorded in TV
footage.  Despite repeated requests, police came and stayed just for
few minutes. It did not intervene effectively. The CPI(M) candidate
had alerted the Election Commission much before about the possibility
of booth capturing. But the state election office failed to ensure
free and fair voting in these disturbed areas. The result showed that
in these booths Congress candidate ‘polled’ 600 to 700 votes while
CPI(M) got just 6 to 20 votes. In one such booth (in Patlatola Primary
School, Booth no: 23) Congress candidate has got 679 votes out of
total 685, while CPI(M) candidate has not got any vote at all. The
dreaded criminals from Jharkhand were brought to terrorise the entire
area. Congress candidate took a lead of more than 7000 votes from
these 18 booths and thus saved the ‘prestige’ of himself and his
father on whose name he fought the elections.



CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat termed the result of Jangipur
as ‘technical victory’ of Congress. Biman Basu, Left Front chairman
pointed towards drastic reduction of votes of Congress. It was because
of the anti-people policies of the centre and non implementation of
promises, he asserted. CPI(M) Murshidabad district secretary Mriganka
Bhattacharya rightly concluded that although the result was formally
clinched in favour of Congress through manipulations and terror in the
18 booths, they were morally defeated.


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Best

A. Mani





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