Instead of the elections themselves, it was the outbreak of poll violence in West Bengal that dominated the headlines once again.
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00:00Ballot boxes were broken open, votes were set on fire and at least a dozen people were killed.
00:07These were the scenes that marred West Bengal's panchayat polls in July 2023.
00:17It all started right when the state government announced the date for the panchayat elections.
00:22While it's not clear in many instances who caused the violence,
00:27opposition parties like the BJP, the Congress and the left accused the ruling Trinamool Congress
00:33of preventing their candidates from filing nominations.
00:37They also said that the polls were announced too soon
00:40and 60,000 of their candidates were left out from filing nominations.
00:44West Bengal has 3,317 Gram Panchayats and 63,283 Panchayat seats.
00:52These panchayat polls act as a litmus test for all parties in the state
00:56for the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
00:58As a result of the violent clashes,
01:00the Calcutta High Court ordered central forces to be deployed across the state.
01:05However, West Bengal isn't a state new to poll violence.
01:09Murders have rocked its politics since the 1960s.
01:14Some experts argue that the state entered a pattern of violence for political gain
01:18influenced by mobilizations like the communist and Naxalbari movements.
01:22Here are some of the major instances of violence in the last two decades.
01:27In 2006, Tata Motors chose Shingur to set up a factory of their small car, Nano,
01:33with help from the then-governing Communist Party of India, Marxist.
01:37Farmers, backed by TMC supremo Mamta Banerjee,
01:40began protesting over the acquisition of land for the Tata project.
01:44Police and CPIM gathers began guarding the newly fenced-off land,
01:49while Banerjee announced a state-wide bandh, during which violence erupted.
01:54Eventually, Tata decided to move out of Bengal and into the more welcoming Gujarat.
01:58The following year, in 2007, the Budhudeb Bhattacharjee government
02:02announced a special economic zone in Nandigram, a left stronghold.
02:06The TMC began protests against the SEZ, and farmers sealed off the area.
02:12However, in March, when police entered Nandigram, they ran into the protesters.
02:17When lathi charges and tear gas failed, the police opened fire, killing 14.
02:23In 2021, as Bengal lived its tightest election of the century,
02:28everyday Bengalis paid a terribly high price for receipt.
02:32Both the TMC and the BJP alleged that over two years,
02:36close to a hundred of their workers had died at the hands of supporters of their political opposition.
02:41In 2022, eight people were burned to death in a village in Birbhum,
02:46merely hours after the TMC panchayat leader was killed.
02:50Ten houses were set on fire, with mostly women and children trapped inside.