West Bengal govt sees red, then mellows

Phase I of polls will take place in 11 districts of South Bengal; while five districts of North Bengal and Murshidabad will be covered in phase II

A day after the State Election Commission (SEC) wrote to the West Bengal government refusing to accept the latter's panchayat poll dates, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government on Tuesday climbed down from its earlier stand.

Though West Bengal Panchayat Minister Subrata Mukherjee on Tuesday came down heavily on the poll body, describing the latter's 11-page letter as "school-boyish", it implicitly offered a compromise formula, which entailed a more equitable division of districts for the polls to be held in two phases.

Initially, 12 districts in South Bengal would be covered in the first phase on April 26 and five districts in North Bengal in the second phase on April 30, the panchayat minister said. Later in the evening, Mukherjee announced the alteration in the division of the districts for a third time. According to the government's latest announcement, the first phase of polls would take place in 11 districts of South Bengal, while five districts of North Bengal and Murshidabad district would be covered in the second phase. Earlier, the state government had decided to hold elections in three districts - Malda, Murshidabad and North Dinajpur - in the second phase.

SEC, however, is yet to respond to the state government's revised poll schedule. Officials said SEC would respond after discussing the matter in its internal meeting on Thursday.

The decision to alter the division of districts for the polls was communicated in the second press conference held by the panchayat minister. In the first press conference, just about half-an-hour before the second one, the minister had said, "Ten-and-a-half pages of the (SEC) letter are irrelevant. It seems they (SEC) wanted to grab newspaper headlines and, may be, they have some other purpose, too. There is no question of reconsidering our decision. We are sticking to the poll dates, which are already being notified. We are sending a reply on Tuesday stating our stand."

He also dared the SEC to move the court. "It is not just the State Election Commission, anybody can move the court if the person wants. Whatever we have done is in accordance with the state Panchayat Act. It was the responsibility of the state government to fix the dates; the SEC is expected to conduct the elections. It is up to them what they want to do."

State Election Commissioner Mira Pandey, meanwhile, met Governor M K Narayan on Tuesday to explain the commission's stance. The governor later called the chief secretary to discuss the matter.

The latest decision of the state government is likely to be more palatable for the SEC. Apart from the main bone of contention of whether or not to have a three-phase poll, in the presence of central security forces, the particular division of districts over two phases seems to have irked the SEC.

The second phase would have included just the Congress-dominated Malda, Murshidabad, North Dinajpur districts. Some senior bureaucrats had suggested that as a compromise formula, the state government should divide the districts equally but it was quashed by the leadership. No rationale was provided for this division, and it was also mentioned in the letter sent by the election commission.

The Writers' Building, the state secretariat, was abuzz with theories on the face-off between the state government and the election commission. "It is possible that the TMC leadership does not want panchayat elections now. The panchayat bodies would have to be dissolved in June; if elections were not held by that time, the administration would take charge and the government would have complete control (over them)," said a Writers' Building official.