The political landscape in West Bengal suddenly went out of the ordinary. Trinamool Congress candidate Jahangir Khan, who is among the top contenders for the Falta Assembly, has said that he will withdraw from the assembly repoll. This took place on Tuesday. What’s shocking is the timing. The real voting will take place on May 21. That means he was out a mere forty-eight hours before people were to hit the booths
A week ago, Khan had won a huge case earlier in the day in the Calcutta High Court. The court basically gave him a green light to run. They kept him from being arrested by the police. He was expected to be on the campaign trail in full swing. Rather, he went the whole nine yards and walked away.
The official nomination day was almost two weeks back, so Khan is technically still on the electronic voting machines. However, he has announced that he’s done, informing everybody. He will not be involved. He will not allow poll agents to go to the booths. The Trinamool Congress is left without a viable candidate in an electorate which was a bastion of the party’s presence in the past
A Legal Victory which went Unused
If you want to get a grasp on how bizarre this is, you need to watch the run-up to Monday’s hearing in court. Khan’s defence lawyers hurried to Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya. They were frantic. They said the police were piling brand new charges on Khan daily that they were imposing to try to keep him from campaigning. His lawyers appealed for assistance. They were interested in knowing how many First Information Reports were there against him
The judge listened. Justice Bhattacharyya decided to safeguard the candidate. He instructed the police not to take any coercive measures against Khan until May 26. If Khan wants to campaign without threatening voters and abiding by election rules, he can do that, Kothari said.
Khan got the whole 10 points. He was on the legal side he wanted. He could go out and fight the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Debanshu Panda. Khan held a press conference and resigned less than 24 hours after obtaining this safety net from the top court in the state. It left any political analysts in a complete state of perplexity.
The Pushpa vs Singham Drama
It’s been a very private and noisy war. Last month, police poll observer Ajay Pal Sharma went to Khan’s house. Sharma is an independent cop from UP. It wasn’t a good trip for Khan. He did engage in an open tirade. He boasted to his supporters that he wouldn’t bow down to anyone.
He really likened himself to a movie character. This is Bengal and if the cop thinks he is “Singham”, Khan is “Pushpa,” he said. He shouted that pushpa bows not. The crowd loved it.
However, on Tuesday the local media had a field day ridiculing him. News of “Pushpa” bowing down in Bengal was played the loudest. His aggressive attitude completely vanished. He changed his voice in an instant, dizzy people. He began to speak of peace and development rather than take on the administration in fighting.
The Strange Reason for Quitting
The reporters asked Khan how he could be escaping from a fight he promised to win, to which he surprised everyone with his answer. He didn’t blame the police. He didn’t admit he was afraid he’d go to jail. Rather, he complimented the new Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari.
This month, the BJP secured a victory in state polls, with its 207 seats down from 346 five years ago and the TMC now holding only 80 seats. Suvendu Adhikari is now the government’s leader. Khan told the media that the Falta constituency would be provided a “special development package” by Adhikari. Khan said that his sole aim in life was to see a “Golden Falta. He explained that if the Chief Minister would like to give money to develop his hometown, then he is not at any problem stepping aside for peace and prosperity.
It totally caught Trinamool Congress leaders off guard. They promptly broke away from Khan. The party issued a firm statement that his withdrawal was one that was personal. They didn’t support it at all.
The severity of the pressure is disputed.Severe pressure is a matter of contention.
The TMC may be angry with Khan, but they’re also angry with the system. The party says the Falta environment has been a poisonous one from the get-go since election results were first announced on May 4. They claim more than 100 of their local employees have been arrested in the Falta segment alone. Their party offices are being broken into, raided, and occupied by others in the middle of the day, they say.
TMC says Khan stepped down “not due to his change of heart about BJP’s development plans”. They claim he just gave in to extreme pressure by the central authorities and local police. They used the word “succumbed” to describe what happened to him.
The BJP’s reaction to the situation is totally different. Suvendu Adhikari gave a giant roadshow in Falta on Tuesday afternoon. He mercilessly ridiculed Khan in front of 10,000 cheering fans. Adhikari told journalists that Khan wasn’t omitted for goodness or love towards development. He said Khan fled because there was no one willing to be his polling agent due to the strict security measures. The BJP leader believed that if Khan had not been able to rig booths then he would have ended up with an embarrassing defeat to them.
The need for a Repoll.
The idea that Falta is even voting right now is because they couldn’t get the polling day to work on April 29th. The Election Commission got hundreds of complaints related to flagrant electoral offenses. There were widespread allegations of booth capturing and EVM tampering.
It escalated to such a violent and chaotic situation that the poll panel took a rare step. On the 3rd of May they declared the results of the 285 polling stations across the whole constituency as cancelled. They said they would order a new poll to be conducted all the way up, with the poll to be taken on May 21.
The whole dynamics of that repoll have been upset. The area used to be where Abhishek Banerjee, the TMC leader, would get huge lead in votes. This was a high point of the party. As Khan remains out of the fray, the election has become a BJP walkover. Central forces are patrolling the streets, the campaign microphones are shut and the voters stand in wonderment as a political battle ended before the ballots even dropped.
