The KMC election on Sunday has set the stage for a fight between the ruling TMC, with several sitting councilors trying to maintain its ground amid a ruckus within it over quitting the opposition BJP, the challenge for which is in the city. The second place is to be snatched. The civic body from the CPI(M)-led Left Front. The BJP also has a task to hold its herd together after facing an exodus after the assembly election defeat.
For the saffron party, getting smarter after its defeat in the assembly elections in which it finished second, the challenge will be to put aside internal differences and maintain its ground among urban voters.
Internal differences within the BJP have been in the open for the past few months.
The civic polls, delayed due to the pandemic, will be an opportunity for the Trinamool Congress to effect a much-needed image change after the 2018 panchayat elections, given that it is trying to expand nationally. Rural elections that year were marked by widespread violence and change would depend on ensuring peaceful KMC elections.
The TMC leadership has so far issued warnings to its candidates against any violence and threatened to expel those involved or not allow free and fair elections.
The TMC returned to power in West Bengal for the third time in a row and won all the 16 assembly constituencies in the city in the April-May assembly elections. It has been in power in the city’s civic body since 2010 and is expected to dominate the KMC election this time as well, following its massive victory in the state election and the recent UNESCO’s ‘Intangible Heritage’ tag for Kolkata’s Durga Puja. while riding.
Elections in all the 144 wards of KMC will be held on December 19 and the counting of votes will take place on December 21. Buoyed by its performance in the assembly elections, the party has decided to go for an image makeover and has dropped 39. ‘Non performing’ sitting counselor. Some of them are fighting as independents or have become inactive in campaigning.
The BJP’s vote share in the KMC region in the assembly elections was 29 per cent, while it was 38 per cent in the state. In the previous edition of the KMC election, which was held in 2015, TMC won 124 wards, Left Front 13, BJP five and Congress two.
The ruling party, which has come out with a 10-point vision document for the civic polls, is expected to get over 135 seats this time. “The development that the TMC board (in the civic body) has done since 2010 and the state government since 2011 is enough to ensure our victory in the KMC elections. After our success in the assembly elections under Mamata Banerjee’s leadership, the KMC elections The party’s victory in the U.S. is a foregone conclusion,” former Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim, also a minister of state, said.
Unlike the 2015 KMC election campaign, when TMC went to battle to project the then Mayor Sovan Chatterjee as its mayoral candidate, TMC has not announced a candidate this time. Though Hakim declined to comment, party sources said the TMC leadership decided against announcing any mayoral candidate this time as it did not want a “communal campaign to take shape”.
A senior TMC leader said, “If we had projected Hakim as our candidate, we would have seen the BJP going to the city on the issue of Muslim mayor. We did not want that to happen, so we have hired anyone. Decided not to do the project.” A trusted aide of party supremo Mamata Banerjee, Hakim took over as the mayor of Kolkata in December 2018 after Chatterjee resigned from Chatterjee’s post and other ministerial posts due to personal reasons.
In the 145-year-old history of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, nationalists such as Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Bidhan Chandra Roy, who were also former chief ministers, sat in the mayor’s chair in independent India. Hakim was the first Muslim mayor of the city after independence. The civic body was created during the British period in 1876 by bringing in the Calcutta Municipal Consolidation Act, 1876.
The BJP, which lacked vigor in the KMC election campaign, expects the party to bring “astonishing results” if free and fair elections are held. “We wanted the KMC elections to be held in the presence of central forces. But now since the elections will be held under the state police, we are apprehensive about how the elections will be held. If it is free and fair, we hope to come. With amazing results,” BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar said.
Incidentally, both the TMC and the BJP have one adversary – the Independents. Independents are the contestants who have been denied tickets by their respective parties and are contesting on their own in both North and South Kolkata. The Congress and the Left Front, which failed to open their account in the state assembly for the first time since independence and were pushed to the margins of West Bengal politics, decided to contest the elections separately this time.
Facing an existential crisis, the CPI(M) has this time fielded young candidates from its Red Volunteers Brigade – a group of Left activists in their twenties who have earned praise for their humanitarian services during the lockdown . The Left Front is pinning its hopes on the youth group to regain lost ground among urban voters in the civic polls to be held on Sunday.
“The Red Volunteers have a wide acceptance among the masses. The vote share they managed to get in the last assembly election was much higher than our average vote share. So this time during the KMC elections, more young candidates are being fielded. A senior CPI(M) leader said he said the CPI(M) aims to defeat both the TMC and the BJP, but at the same time acknowledged that maintaining the number two position in civic polls would be its main challenge. Congress is expecting good results.
The BJP, Left Front and Congress have focused on the main issues in their manifestos for the KMC elections on alleged illegal constructions, water logging and deteriorating law and order in the city. The ruling Trinamool Congress on its part has promised to improve the facilities, which it claims was implemented during its tenure in the last two terms. During her brief election campaign, Banerjee had emphasized on providing “better and corruption-free” civic services.
The TMC supremo also said that the UNESCO heritage tag for the city’s Durga Puja is due to the government’s efforts and it would be enough to win the election. According to political analyst Suman Bhattacharya, the challenge before the TMC is to ensure violence-free elections, while for the BJP it is a fight to prove its existence in South Bengal.
“I would not be surprised if the Left gets a higher vote share or number of seats than the BJP in the KMC election,” he said.
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