New Delhi: The West Bengal panchayat elections, held in May this year, were marred by violence and cost more than 24 people their lives. The Trinamool Congress state government, which had already come under fire for the series of events, now faces the ire of the Supreme Court, which on Tuesday criticised the West Bengal Election Commission for alleged malpractice.According to a report in The Indian Express, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra questioned how thousands of seats went uncontested in various districts across the state, saying that a few hundred could have been understood, but a thousand is “shocking”.As per the data released by the West Bengal State Election Commission, 20,076 of the 58,692 seats went uncontested.In all, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress won 73% of the gram panchayat seats, 90% of the panchayat samiti seats and 99% of the zilla parishad seats in the polls. The party won 34% of the seats uncontested, reports say, citing the State Election Commission’s statistics. Most of these seats were in Birbhum, Bankura, South 24 Parganas and Murshidabad districts.The Bengal panchayat polls had also hit the headlines for several other reasons, including opposition candidates facing blocks in filing their nomination papers, lumpen elements being allowed to run free, and the ongoing tussle between the TMC and the BJP, as the latter continues to grow in the state.According to an editorial in The Hindu, “should the court clear the TMC’s claim to these seats, it will be the first time since the three-tier rural poll was instituted in 1978 that one-third of the seats have been bagged without even a semblance of a fight.”
