In some booths more than 90% votes have been cast, of which the CPI(M) has secured more than 90-95% clearly establishing rigging in these constitencies / booths. Parties around the world are labelled dictatorial and regimes in history are called fascist for engaging in less harmful activities. The people’s democratic choice was not allowed to reflect freely through the election process. Although the CPI(M) ruled Left Front Government has been continously deteriorating the socio-economic plight of West Bengal, mysteriously the “anti-incumbancy effect” has never been reflected over last 30 years through elections in West Bengal simply because the CPI(M) has been subverting the democratic modalities of elections all the time by subjugating the electorate and by spreading of terror to sabotage opposition’s campaigning through threat perpetrated by its militant cadre, a subservient administration and politicised-cum-criminalised police as well as through open and discreet rigging of the election process.
The saga of terror unleashed by CPI(M) in connivance with the administration and the police being an extension of the CPI(M) cadre was reflected in the last Assembly Elections in 2001 and the wishes of the common man for a change in the Governance of the State was not reflected in the Election results by not allowing the voters to enjoy their constitutional rights of free choice and expression. A crime had again been perpetrated on democracy in West Bengal.
In addition to the aforesaid operational tactics for subverting the democratic requirements of free and fair elections, the CPI(M) added two more tactics to forcibly create a landsilde victory in its favour in the last Panchayat Election’2003. These newly adopted additional machinations were (a) forcibly dissuade the opposition from submission of Nomination Form and (b) forcibly persuade the oppositon to withdraw the nominations. Thus as many as 23,800 out of 58,357 seats at various levels of the Panchayat system were won by the CPI(M) uncontested in the said Panchayat Elections. The terror unleashed by the CPI(M) was by itself a naked aggression on democracy of a much higher dimension than seen on previous occassions. Women were raped and paraded without clothes, their menfolk mercilessly beaten up and murdered, the children beaten up in presence of their parents, the crops forcibly harvested, the ponds poisoned to kill the fish, burning down of their homes and hutments, all avenues of physical and economic assault was resorted to. More than thousands of our workers have been killed by the CPI(M), thousands have been rendered homeless.
The Government’s misdeeds to subvert the electoral process were brutally exposed by the “explosive” report submitted by the Special Election Observer for West Bengal, Afzal Amanullah, submitted after the 2004 Lok Sabha Election. The report pointed out that the entire exercise for the 14th Lok Sabha Election in West Bengal was “a farce” and the ruling CPI(M)’s belligerent behaviour and the obstacles put up by key figures in the State Administration came in the way of creating a level playing field for holding a free and fair poll in the State. Thus it is evident that the CPI(M) led Left Front Government in West Bengal have become masters in the ‘Art of Rigging elections’, indulging in State sponsored terrorism, choking the voice of the people, making a mockery of the democratic process and shamelessly snatching the electoral rights of the citizens. To gain fascist control over the Election scenario, the CPI(M) has started brutal attrocities.