ISLAMABAD: Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory in West Bengal marked the completion of a “ruthlessly crafted mission” that brought down the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government and pushed India closer to a unitary, majoritarian political order, The Wire reported on Friday.
The Election Commission of India and the BJP acted as “close collaborators” in a process that weakened the TMC in one of India’s most politically important states, TMC and other BJP opposition parties have been consistently claiming.
Around 2.7 million voters were disenfranchised because “logical discrepancies” in voter records could not be resolved in time due to the controversial ‘Special Intensive Revision’ (SIR).
The episode has been described as an unprecedented breach of the constitutional requirement for free and fair elections.
The vote difference between the BJP and TMC was around 3 million, making the exclusion of 2.7 million voters politically significant, especially because several seats were won or lost by margins below 5,000 votes.
Some left-wing groups had openly used the slogan “pehle Ram, phir Vaam,” meaning first the party of Ram, i.e. the BJP, then the poltitical left.
The BJP campaign played the communal card as much as possible and appealed to Bengalis as Hindus in unusually direct terms.
The Election Commission and political establishment were criticized for ignoring constitutional restrictions against religious appeals during campaigns.
The TMC was attacked for allegedly appeasing Muslims, while BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari reportedly said only Hindus had voted for him.
The BJP also did not field a single Muslim candidate in the West Bengal elections.
Bengal’s fall to BJP advanced its alleged goal of building a one-party right-wing state that treats federalism as a threat to national unity, Indian media reported.
Such a project could eventually turn India into a majoritarian theocracy, reported The Wire.
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