Bengal: Crack down on political violence

In the span of a few hours on Sunday, two councillors from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Congress parties were shot dead in separate incidents in West Bengal, highlighting, once again, the alarming levels of political violence that have come to characterise the state. That the twin shootings came weeks after the sensational killing of political worker Anis Khan should set alarm bells ringing and prompt the state government to institute sincere inquiries.

Violence has always been an unfortunate marker of political processes in the state. The phenomenon took root during the successive post-Partition governments of the Congress and the Left, and has not got any better during the decade of TMC rule.

The twin murders, coupled with the sporadic violence in local body polls last week, and the gruesome killing of Khan paint a sorry picture of the state’s law and order apparatus, which appears beholden to political interests and unable to crack down on criminals with political patronage. It also indicates that the multiple court-monitored inquiries after the 2021 state polls have had little impact on the ground, especially in reversing the culture of political violence. There are many admirable things about the state’s political culture, including the consistently high electoral turnout, more women visible in public life and election arenas than in many other states, and a markedly lower impact of casteist and communal violence in suppressing marginalised communities. But political violence is a blot on this record, one that is eroding the mandate that the TMC received less than a year ago. The chief minister and the state government need to act, even if it means also cracking down on their own.