The CPI(M) has criticised the West Bengal Government’s decision to appealing against a High Court order upholding the State Election Commission’s three-phase panchayat elections schedule. The party has said the move exposed Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s intentions to “sabotage” the Panchayat polls in the State.
The Opposition leader and CPI(M) Politburo member Surjya Kanta Misra told reporters that the Trinamool Congress feared a mass erosion in their votes in the polls to the local bodies and hence it wanted to block the polls.
“Now when both the State Panchayat and the law Ministers have said the State Government will challenge the High Court’s order in a division bench and then again, if things go otherwise, approach the Supreme Court, it is evident that the Trinamool Congress does not want to hold rural polls at all,” said Misra.
“From the outset, we were apprehensive about the Government’s intention of holding panchayat polls. Vote share in the 2011 Assembly polls showed that if the Trinamool contested without Congress support, then the left Front was much ahead. And Trinamool’s support base today is not where it was in 2011,” he added.
The crucial rural polls are slated in June this year. In a setback to the State Government, the Calcutta High Court had on Friday directed that these elections would be held in three phases using Central armed forces on dates decided by the State Election Commission and had observed that primacy of the Commission was not negotiable.
Observing that Trinamool Congress was facing trouble after the Saradha scam, Mishra said Mamata’s party was wary of their rural support base.
“We in the left don’t expect miracles. We know, if polls are held on time, we might lose some zilla parishads to them. But, that has never prompted us to create obstacles in the democratic process,” he said
The CPI(M) has planned to hold a series of protest meetings, rallies and ‘jail bharo’ agitations from the third week of May in West Bengal, “against the State Government’s alleged dilly-dallying on holding of these rural polls and against mushrooming of ponzi scheme operators in the State,” said Misra.