Subhash Das, a primary school teacher with a monthly salary of Rs 24,000 and burgeoning treatment expenses for his child had always voted for the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from his early teens. His political affiliation was unwavering till the change of guard in 2011, which he remembers as ‘momentous’. His political preference underwent a sea change. And as Mamata Banerjee climbed to power at the head of the ‘revolutionising’ Trinamool Congress, promising equity, equality and justice, Das became a Mamata bhakt. He preferred the trend — joined Trinamool, ‘the grassroots party’, as he believed it to be.
It was a mishap in Das’s family that changed the 49-year-old man’s political choice once again. This time he voted for the BJP and joined those who took over the Trinamool party office near his house at Duttapukur in North 24-Parganas district, around 40 km from Kolkata. The locals handed over the building to the CPI(M), to whom it rightfully belonged. The Trinamool’s twin flowers were painted out; the Red of CPI(M) re-emerged with the flags and buntings and the Red and the Saffron coloured flags co-exist at Duttapukur. “The shift from Trinamool to BJP was as momentous as in 2011,”says Das. “All people changed to Saffron, as they had to Trinamool then. What’s the big deal?”
He recalled: ‘‘A few months ago, my son Sharad fainted at home. He was diagnosed as suffering from a neurological disorder. I had to retrieve my meager savings in the bank to take him to Christian Medical College in Vellore for treatment. I had to take loans, borrow money from my relatives for his treatment. When I heard that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had refused to allow Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Ayushman Bharat scheme in West Bengal, I was shattered. She has no family. But did she ever consider our poor standards to ponder how it would have helped a father like me, struggling hard to see his 12-year-old son smiling again? I decided to vote for the BJP,’’ said Das.
Das, who was a polling staff in last year’s panchayat elections and was allegedly manhandled at a counting centre by Trinamool agents despite being a party man, is one of the millions of faces whose support to BJP — relatively a new entrant to competitive politics in West Bengal — helped it win big in the just concluded Lok Sabha polls. The CPI(M) suffered a steep decline of 23% in its vote share as even Left supporters, who had voted for their party in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, decided to opt for the BJP in 2019 to be rid of the Trinamool cadres’ depredations and violence at the village and small town levels.
From red (Left) to green(TMC) and again to saffron (BJP) — the changes in Das’s political journey as an elector is reflected on the walls of hundreds of party offices across the state since the Lok Sabha elections result was declared. Active and passionate Trinamool activists and cadres surrendered the party assets to BJP leaders and welcomed them to their homes. At places where the ruling Trinamool resisted and won’t give up, its ex-cadres helped the BJP take them over.
At some places, they returned the party offices captured by Trinamool in 2011 to the CPI(M). In other places, the BJP, finding itself in possession of such property, promptly made it over to the CPI(M) with commoners milling around and celebrating the occasion. At each place, the refrain was the same — “we are happy to be rid of Trinamool’s corruption and high-handedness of its agents. However, there were post-poll clashes too and more than 200 incidents have been registered, mostly over the issue of taking control of the party offices. CM Mamata Banerjee’s direction to her party cadres to recapture the party offices to return them to the “rightful owners” also triggered clashes and three persons have died post the election results.
The party office that Trinamool had taken over from the CPI(M) in 2011 at Mahishda, the ancestral village of Dipak Adhikary, who was elected from Ghatal Lok Sabha seat with a margin of 1,08,000 votes, was abandoned despite the party candidate securing a victory. A day after the election result was announced, no one was seen in the one-storey building that used to be the most favoured destination for local party workers. Trinamool’s symbols had been erased overnight and the building white-washed by locals.
“Hours after the election result, a group of men came and tied BJP’s flags to the trees near the party office. Sensing a backlash, Trinamool men abandoned their office. It is a re-run of 2011 when the red flags of CPI(M) were replaced overnight and Trinamool had covered the building with their party flags,’’ recalled Mohammad Asif, a resident of the area.
Elaborating on what triggered post-poll violence in the rural pockets of Bengal, a former zonal committee member of the CPI(M) who joined the BJP said Trinamool is resisting change because the power of being a ruling party’s cadre member secured their livelihood. “The commissions collected money from even beneficiaries of government schemes, right from a widow to a homeless poor. That secured their bread and butter. Each panchayat spends several crores a year and these Trinamool satraps lived on the commission they collected from the poor beneficiaries of the schemes. Faced with an uncertain future, they are not ready to retreat,” he said.
Office politics
Offices bearing party flags in remote pockets of Bengal are considered as a symbol of the organisations’ strength and penetration at the grassroots level. The CPI(M) had set up more than 7,000 party offices for its committees at local and zonal levels and for other mass organisations across the state during its tenure. Local trivial issues used to be sorted out at the party offices by summoning the two rival groups or individuals.
After the change of guard in the state in 2011, a number of CPI(M) party offices were allegedly taken over by Trinamool activists-often ex-party members. The party’s leadership had to shut many offices after suffering a sharp decline in its membership which also triggered a massive loss in levy collection.
“Daily and regular expenditures of party offices used to be maintained with the levy collection. The flow of funds started drying up. We had no option left but to shut down a large number of party offices. The Trinamool took over many others that we abandoned,” said a CPI(M) leader in Kolkata, preferring anonymity.
The BJP has taken over more than 200 party offices from the Trinamool and nearly 150 of them were returned to the CPI(M). The saffron party, however, described it as a fall out of common people’s anger against the Trinamool.“Electors, who found themselves abused by Trinamool agents have found a new political force to take refuge under. They had suffered from the Trinamool’s torture and corruption and are now retaliating. The Trinamool cadres are abandoning the party offices which they had forcibly taken over from the CPI(M). Now the Left is taking control of the abandoned offices,” said BJP’s state president Dilip Ghosh.
Refuting BJP’s hand behind recapturing party offices, CPI(M) central committee member Sujan Chakrabarty said, “This is a false propaganda. Trinamool supporters have realised that the people’s verdict has gone against them. They are leaving the party offices which used to be owned by our party and we are taking possession.”