A BJP worker was found hanging in a North Kolkata neighborhood on the morning of May 6, in the middle of Home Minister Amit Shah’s two-day visit to West Bengal, igniting a new war of words between the saffron camp and the Trinamool Congress and forcing the Union Home Minister to make an unscheduled stop at the deceased’s house.
The BJP has been the target of violence perpetrated by TMC activists in Bengal, with the police accused of working hand in glove with the culprits. BJP employees have been slain, women have been raped, houses and possessions have been burned down and taken, and hundreds of people have been forced to escape their communities.
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Mamata Banerjee was outspoken in her criticism of the Election Commission’s decision to hold Bengal assembly elections in eight states last year. However, the judgment was made based on a report from the Ministry of Home Affairs.
During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in the state, the MHA recorded 693 incidences of violence and 11 fatalities. Even after the elections, in which the BJP won a record 18 out of 42 seats, there were 852 incidences of political violence recorded between June 1 and December 31, 2019, resulting in 61 fatalities.
According to the MHA report, 663 events occurred in 2020, with 57 persons dead. There were 23 acts of violence in the first week of January 2021 alone, resulting in two fatalities and 43 injuries. According to the report, 23 persons from various political parties were murdered in riots during the 2018 panchayat elections.
What does the NCRB data indicate?
Kerala, which has had over 200 political assassinations in the previous three decades, with the CPI(M) and, more recently, the SDPI targeting RSS activists, is nowhere near Bengal. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Bengal has seen 20 political killings every year since 1999. According to NCRB statistics, it has the most significant number of political murders in India between 2010 and 2019.
Bengal was responsible for 12 of India’s 54 political killings in 2018. NCRB utilized the previous year’s data in its records since the state did not submit statistics for 2019 – the actual amounts are projected to be significantly higher. This made Bengal the state with the most political assassinations for the second year.
With nine and seven political murders, respectively, Bihar and Maharashtra followed Bengal in 2018. Bihar and Jharkhand each recorded six murders the next year, following Bengal. On the other hand, Bengal recorded just three political assassinations in 2020.
Activists and opposition leaders have sneered at these estimates, accusing the TMC administration of downplaying actual data. Since 2014, the BJP claims that over 200 of its activists have been slain in Bengal, many of whom have been misidentified as suicides.
According to NCRB statistics, Kerala has led India in overall incidences of political violence for three years in a row. In 2018, the state was responsible for 592 of the 1,495 occurrences, 495 of the 1,209 events in 2019, and 628 of the 1,032 cases in 2020. This, however, may be ascribed to improved reporting. Kerala has seen multiple assassinations of BJP-RSS and other political workers this year.
