“Nobody fulfils what we deserve as citizens. All political parties only give false promises,” said Mohammad Siraj, 60, sitting at a tea stall in Sarangpur village in Murshidabad’s Domkal. “There is no employment, no industry, nothing. Elections come and go but nobody does anything.”

Distrust of political parties and concerns about unemployment are a recurring theme in conversations across Murshidabad, a Muslim-majority district in West Bengal. According to locals, “70 percent” of their youths, aged between 15 and 30, migrate to states like Kerala and Karnataka every year for jobs. Locals allege almost every home has a family member working outside the state, often as a mason.

Yet employment is not a prominent election issue in Murshidabad district, which contains three Lok Sabha constituencies – Murshidabad, Berhampur and Jangipur – and part of Dakshin Malda constituency. With over 60 percent of its 71 lakh voters being Muslim, these constituencies contribute a significant number of votes to non-BJP, ‘secular’ parties at the state and national level.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress won Berhampur and Dakshin Malda while the Trinamool Congress comfortably secured Jangipur and Murshidabad with margins exceeding two lakh votes. The BJP emerged as the second contender in Berhampur, Dakshin Malda and Jangipur. 

In the 2021 assembly polls, the TMC won 18 out of Murshidabad’s 20 assembly constituencies, while the BJP won two: Berhampur and Murshidabad. Locals say the Muslim vote that year “completely shifted” to the TMC – surveys say 75 percent of the state’s Muslims voted for the party – due to the outcry over the central government’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens.

This year, though, the CAA-NRC issue has found little resonance despite the TMC’s efforts to highlight it. There’s also disenchantment against the governing party, paving the way for a three-cornered contest between the TMC, BJP and Congress-Left alliance. While the TMC is nominally part of the Congress-led INDIA alliance, party head Mamata Banerjee clearly said in March that the alliance has “ceased to exist” in her state.

Banerjee is clearly worried about minority votes shifting from the TMC to the Congress-Left. During a rally in Malda on April 28, she said if minority voters divided their votes between the TMC and Congress-Left, the BJP would “come to power, implement the NRC with full force, and send you to detention camps”.

“But I will never allow that to happen,” she said.

Yet villagers in Murshidabad told Newslaundry that they’re more worried about unemployment than citizenship. 

“There is no work in the village,” said Shaheen, 30, a shopkeeper in Sarangpur who worked in Kerala until four years ago. “Even if one gets work here, the wage is as low as Rs 250. How can one support his family these days when prices of all commodities are touching the sky?”

Muzamil Hoque, a resident of Podda Nadir Bag in Jalangi in Murshidabad constituency, said, “Earlier there was fear which helped the TMC in the assembly polls. But now, people have realised nothing will happen. These issues only come up before the elections.” 

Scheme vs corruption 

In her speeches, Banerjee’s focus has been on the CAA-NRC and the Congress-Left alliance “dividing” votes. She’s also been talking about the SSC scam, a multi-crore corruption case involving her state’s recruitment scheme.

But at the grassroots, local leaders are banking on state government schemes like Lakshmir Bhandar, which provides financial assistance to women aged between 25 and 60 from economically backward sections. As of October 2023, around two crore beneficiaries are enrolled under the scheme in the state.

“We don’t need anything else,” said Moniruddin Mondal, a TMC panchayat member in Jangipur’s Sagardighi. “Lakshmi Bhandar will be sufficient for our victory.”

In Domkal, Khandekar Omar Faruk, who runs an internet cafe, said the scheme is a “big deal”. “Here, women don’t even receive Rs 100 from their husbands. So, when a woman gets Rs 1,000, it’s a big deal. They feel that if their husbands are not looking after them, Didi is taking care of them. TMC is likely to get the majority of women’s votes.”

Women voters constitute nearly 50 percent of West Bengal’s total electorate – about 3.73 crore women voters as against 3.85 crore men. In 2021, over 50 percent of the state’s women voters supported the TMC.

But in Jalongi’s Muradpur village, along the Padma River and near the Bangladesh border, locals are worried about the TMC being a “corrupt” party. Neighbours Jamrul Mondal and Amrul Sheikh agree that corruption is an issue but differ on who’s responsible.

“Can corruption happen if those at the top don’t allow it?” asked Mondal. Sheikh countered: “How do you know? The top level is providing everything and it’s those at the lower level who are not delivering and who are indulging in corruption.”

Concerns about corruption have intensified after central agencies initiated probes against the TMC government. The latest is the school recruitment scam, or SSC scam, in which the high court invalidated the appointments of nearly 25,000 teaching and non-teaching staff. Implicated in the scam are TMC heavyweights Partha Chatterjee and Manik Bhattacharya. Banerjee has accused the BJP of a conspiracy.

Jiaul Almamum, a teacher in a government school in Domkal, told Newslaundry the SSC scam is “one of the biggest issues” this election, especially with unemployment woes. “One major problem here is the political system. Everyone who enters politics here thinks only of making money. It’s like a syndicate.”

Newslaundry witnessed a micro-level example of how the issue is being batted between various political parties. At a tea stall in Sagardighi, we met with three local leaders – Sajal Mukherjee of the Congress, Ripon Sheikh of the CPIM, and Moniruddin Mondal of the TMC. As we spoke, a local interrupted our conversation to describe how a youth with a master’s degree in his village lost his job after the high court judgement on the SSC scam. 

“We would have no issue if the 7,000-odd who took the jobs illegally had been punished,” said the man, who refused to give us his name. “But what happened was that even those who were qualified lost their jobs.”

Congress’s Mukherjee and CPIM’s Sheikh seized the opportunity to criticise Mondal, saying this was “planned dacoity” by the TMC. “What does it show? A planned robbery by TMC in West Bengal,” Mukherjee declared.

Mondal’s response was to shift the blame to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, who had been a senior TMC leader when the alleged scam occurred in 2016. “Everyone knows it’s a political vendetta. It’s all done by Suvendu,” he said.

In Sarangpur, shopkeeper Shaeen pointed out that as parties point fingers over corruption in government appointments, the real victims are youths from poorer backgrounds who are deprived of opportunities and then forced to find jobs elsewhere. 

“If there are 50 youths in our village, 40 are jobless,” he said. “There are no opportunities here,” he said. “Even for government jobs, one needs to bribe politicians.”

The split in votes 

But despite these dire warnings and worries of TMC losing Muslim votes, several villagers said the community will “vote wisely”. Almamun said people rarely vote on issues; they factor in political affiliations and the prevailing sentiment instead.

“Muslims in West Bengal have never had their own party. Minorities here support different parties at different times,” he said. “Earlier, they used to support the CPIM, then it shifted to the TMC.” He added that their votes are “generally against the BJP”, which works in TMC’s favour.

“We moved towards Mamata Didi to be protected from BJP’s NRC and other concerns. If BJP comes to power, the situation in which we are currently living will deteriorate further,” he said. “Mamata Didi knows that when we are fearful, we will support her. And the situation hasn’t changed much.”

But “educated Muslims” are still “considering whether to vote for TMC to maintain its influence or whether there’s benefit in voting for CPIM”, he added.

This split in the minority vote can make or break an election. In 2019, the Congress won Dakshin Malda with a narrow margin of 8,000 votes over the BJP. Wasim Akram, a private school teacher in Farakka, doesn’t think the contest will be that close this time for the BJP as Muslims want to “protect themselves”.

“In the last assembly polls, voting was highly polarised due to fear. This time too, what PM Modi has said so far has consolidated people as before,” he said, referring to the prime minister’s recent speech in Rajasthan. “People understand that this election is for the Lok Sabha and will vote accordingly, even if they voted differently in the assembly elections.”

Azizur Rahman, a social activist from Sujapur in Dakshin Malda, said voter decisions will be driven by the candidate, not party. “There won't be one-sided voting like in the assembly polls. People will vote for the candidate, not just the party,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Congress’s Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who is contesting from Berhampore, has been equating the TMC and BJP in his speeches, accusing Banerjee of exploiting the CAA-NRC issue in the previous polls. He also brought up concerns about corruption at the block and panchayat level in the state. A recent Congress video indicated that Mamata was hand-in-glove with the BJP in order to forward the interests of her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, who was summoned for questioning in connection with the SSC scam.

In Murshidabad, the general sentiment seems to be that the battle lies between the Congress-Left and the TMC. But the alliance itself is questionable; Almamun for instance pointed out the history of bloodshed between the two parties, saying old Congress workers would be very unlikely to vote for the CPIM.

“But that is a very small percentage,” said Rabiul Islam, 50, who runs a tea stall in Berhampore. “New Congress workers have no idea how the CPIM was.”

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