February 22, 2025

West Bengal Polls: Four Phases Or One?

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-04-16 03:29:41

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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

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With India crossing the grim milestone of 2 lakh fresh cases in a day on Thursday, and with West Bengal also recording its highest 1-day case load with 6,769 new cases on the day, Mamata Banerjee's appeal to the Election Commission to club the remaining four phases in the ongoing West Bengal elections makes sense. With cases jumping by 10% or more every single day in April, the longer the election process continues, the more the danger of exposing election officials, security forces, political leaders and workers and the general public to the virus.

While it is true that the EC has made arrangements to hold elections on April 18, 22, 26 and 29 in the remaining phases and everything is in place, one feels that extraordinary situations call for out of the box responses. Even if the vote on April 18 cannot be possibly changed now at such a short notice, the EC must look into the feasibility of clubbing the other three phases on one day. It can schedule the April 22 and 26 voting along with the voting on April 29. That would reduce the exposure.

At the time when the election routine was drawn up for West Bengal, the EC did not anticipate that there will be such high jump in daily cases. But now it has the figures. The pandemic is raging ahead and the EC's response should take that into account. As of now, it has said that it is not looking into the matter and the elections will be held as per schedule.

There is also no need to politicize the matter. The BJP must not take an opposite view just because the sane request to club the remaining phases has been made by Mamata Banerjee. When there is a public emergency like the pandemic and questions of public health are involved, all parties must come together and do what is best for the people.