As Bengal votes today, the battleground region of Birbhum personifies the stakes

Birbhum is seen as a battleground district in the state. The TMC has won most seats uncontested in the past, but the BJP is now making inroads, capitalizing on dissatisfaction with the ruling party.

Birbhum It’s a little past noon on July 1, and 45-year-old Alok Bagdi wipes the sweat off his bare upper body, working furiously in the fields of Birbhum’s Abadanga village, desperately seeking to change the subject of the conversation.

Trinamool Congress supporters during a rally ahead of the panchayat elections, at Ahmedpur in Birbhum, on Thursday. (ANI)

There is nothing wrong; there is no political violence; not even political opposition; there is complete harmony, he says quickly. “All the residents get benefits of various welfare schemes of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government. Every home, except one or two, have toilets under the Centre’s Swachh Bharat Scheme. The folks here live like a family,” says the farmer from the scheduled caste Bagdi community.

In one way, Bagdi has his facts right. There is no political violence. Elections in West Bengal are notoriously violent, but with elections to the three-tier panchayats across 20 districts to be held in a week, there was no official death or incident of violence in the district of Birbhum till July 1. The death of an independent candidate’s husband was reported in Birbhum on July 6.

In other parts of the state, 19 people died between June 9 and July 7, hours before polling was to begin.

But there is a deeper, more pervasive sense of experience driving Bagdi’s reticence and his desire to stay out of trouble. There may have been no violence over the past month, but Birbhum is no stranger to political clashes, deaths and bomb attacks. Just last year, in March, 10 people were killed in a retaliatory strike hours after TMC’s Bhadu Sheikh was shot dead near Bogtui village.

There is also the uneasy sense of churn, an unpredictability to this election. For Birbhum is seeing its first campaign without the physical presence of TMC heavyweight Anubrata Mondal; for years synonymous with the image of the politician-strongman in West Bengal, he was arrested by CBI on cattle smuggling charges in August 2022.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BIRBHUM

The panchayat poll in West Bengal, being held this year across 73,887 seats in 22 districts, is not a new theatre of political violence. In 2003 for instance, as the CPI(M) battled a rising Mamata Banerjee, 76 people were killed. Gun battles and crude bombs are a daily occurrence during the campaign, and while the numbers of deaths have reduced over the years, the sense of pandemonium and unnecessary tragedy persists.

In 2018, for instance, with the TMC government at the helm, 23 people died across Bengal, with 12 of them losing their lives in violence on the day of polling. Although no death was reported in Birbhum on polling day, cameras of the media caught masked men intimidating voters in some parts. The 2018 elections also stood out because of the breadth of allegations of electoral malpractice, charges that the TMC denied. Still, the TMC, which emerged victorious in around 90% of the seats, won 34% of these uncontested, state election commission data shows. Several commentators suggest that with thousands of people alleging that they were not allowed to contest the elections, this dissatisfaction formed the basis of anger against the ruling TMC that the BJP then built on, eventually win a stunning 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019.

In Birbhum, the TMC won every single of the 167 gram panchayats and won all 42 zila parishad seats uncontested. This year, they have won one zila parishad seat uncontested.

In many ways the district that also contains within it the intellectual centre of Shanti Niketan represents the battle for the heart of Bengal, with a mixed population of 62.29% Hindus, 37.06% Muslims, and 0.31% Christians. There are also Santhals (scheduled tribes) and Bagdis (scheduled castes). The 2011 census says that 87.17% of Birbhum’s total population of 3.5 million live in its villages.

It was in Birbhum’s Suchpur village that 11 landless Muslim labourers were lynched by CPI(M) cadres on July 27, 2000, an incident that Mamata Banerjee raised both politically and on the streets. And it was in Birbhum, that 10 people of Mihilal Sheikh’s family were burnt to death in a retaliatory attack hours after TMC leader Bhadu Sheikh was shot dead in Bogtui.

A district police officer, who requested anonymity, said: “In the last 10 years Birbhum has witnessed a lot of violence and death but rarely when elections were being held. Conducting raids to recover bombs and improvised firearms and investigating assaults are round-the-year jobs for the Birbhum police.”

The other omnipresent reason for the significance of Birbhum, of course, is the looming presence of the man known as Keshto, Anubrata Mondal.

THE SHADOW OF MONDAL

Born into a poor farmer’s family in Hatselandi village, Mondal, now 63, grew up running a small grocery shop in his village, as well as selling fish in Siuri town. He joined the Congress as a young man, but was among those that left the party when Mamata Banerjee led an exodus, and formed the TMC.

By 2000, Banerjee had taken note of Mondal, particularly because he stood up to reported CPI(M) pressure in the wake of the Suchpur massacre, organizing party workers, and carrying out protest rallies despite threats. He was appointed the TMC’s district president the same year, a post he still holds 23 years later. He was inducted into the TMC’s working committee in 2022.

During his tenure, Mondal hasn’t ever contested an election himself but has ensured the TMC wins one after another, despite myriad allegations of browbeating his opponents, corruption, and violence. In a public speech during the 2013 panchayat polls, Mondal asked TMC workers to torch the houses of political opponents and hurl bombs at the police if they tried to prevent them. In 2014, he apologised for the comments, saying he did not mean what he said.

During the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha and 2016 and 2021 assembly polls, the Election Commission of India (ECI) ordered that Mondal be kept under surveillance by an executive magistrate and a Central Armed Paramilitary Forces unit on the day of polling in Birbhum. “This is a routine for the Election Commission. Confining me will not affect the poll results. TMC will win all 11 seats in Birbhum and at least 220 of the state’s 294 constituencies,” Mondal said in 2021. Eventually, the TMC won 10 of 11 seats in Birbhum and 213 seats across Bengal.

In 2022, CBI began tailing Mondal. He was accused of running cattle smuggling operations and was arrested on August 31, 2022 after he ignored nine summons in six months. CBI, in its charge sheet, has said that Mondal was linked to 168 land and property deeds executed on or after 2014, and have alleged that proceeds from cattle smuggling were used to buy these properties. He was charged in October 2022. Mondal was moved to Delhi’s Tihar Jail in March this year after the Enforcement Directorate also arrested him on money laundering charges, as they did his daughter Sukanya Mondal.

In Birbhum then, the TMC has found itself playing a balancing act. Mondal’s photographs are missing from campaign material, but his name is often taken by party leaders. Municipal affairs minister Firhad Hakim, addressing party workers at Tarapith in Rampurhat assembly constituency on July 1 said, “It would have been better if Anubrata was here. So what if he isn’t? Mamata Banerjee’s development projects have won the hearts of our people.”

Mohin Mondal of Ratanpur village argued that Mondal’s magic would not wear off just because he was behind bars. “He helped everyone, even his political rivals. In April 2014, Mondal helped a CPI(M) district committee member get admission at a big hospital in Kolkata after he was assaulted by some TMC workers. Mondal even gave a sum of ₹2 lakh to the family for his treatment and did not oppose the arrest of the TMC men. That is part of his folklore.”

In Dubrajpur town, fertilizer trader Ashok Sarkar lists what would ordinarily have been voting issues, but aren’t. “Thousands in these parts depend on NREGA schemes for at least six months. For the rest of the year, they either work in the fields or do odd jobs. But I really don’t expect these issues to affect the panchayat poll results. There may not have been any violence in Birbhum so far but Anubrata’s shadow is everywhere,” he said.

THE STATE OF PLAY IN BIRBHUM

On the ground, it is clear that there are only two parties in the fray in the battle for Birbhum; the BJP and the TMC. In the village of Mallarpur, Bakul Sheikh, a Muslim shopkeeper talks over the noise of a passing TMC rally, supporters raucously dancing to Hindi movie songs blaring from loudspeakers fitted on auto-rickshaws. “There is an undercurrent against TMC. The Bharatiya Janata Party realizes this. That’s why Union home minister Amit Shah launched his Bengal Lok Sabha campaign from Birbhum on April 14,” Sheikh said.

Sheikh said that in his village, much of the conversation is dominated by allegations of the TMC’s corruption. “Their involvement in the distribution of money among beneficiaries of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) or extortion from trucks carrying sand from riverbeds or stones from local quarries, is common knowledge. Mondal’s arrest hasn’t changed anything,” he said.

On their part, the TMC cadres are raising the allegation of being targeted by the BJP, accusing the rival of intentionally stopping Pradhanmantri Awas Yojana funds to harm the states interests. The Centre has argued that they will not release funds until action is taken against alleged malpractices.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, while virtually addressing Dubrajpur party workers from Kolkata on July 3 said, “The Centre is out to kill the poor. They have stopped your funds.”

There are many, however, particularly women, who are still staunch supporters of Banerjee. Basanti Haldar, a homemaker in Bahina village said, “No other government has rolled out so many welfare schemes for common people, especially women and students.”

BJP leaders allege that despite his physical absence, Mondal’s “reign of terror” is very much in operation. “Although TMC is not using Mondal’s photo or name during the campaign, his trusted followers are everywhere and their terror tactics continue. I was beaten up at Nanoor on June 15 while accompanying some candidates who went to file nomination papers,” said Sannasi Charan Mondal, president of the BJP’s Bolpur organizational district unit.

Moloy Mukherjee, vice-president of the TMC’s district unit, said his party has won a few hundred seats without a contest. “We have won one zilla parishad seat, around 50 gram panchayat samiti seats and around 300 gram panchayat seats. There has not been a single incident of major violence. There are instances where our workers treated opposition candidates with sweets and helped them file nomination papers,” Mukherjee said.

Outside Mondal’s two-storey home in Nichupatty in Bolpur town, there is no queue of visitors that would be usual in election season. But inside, one TMC functionary says that the man’s importance in the party and his dominance of Birbhum is still supreme. “When the district core group formed by the chief minister meets at the TMC office in Bolpur, the leaders sit around Mondal’s chair. It is always left empty.”