West Bengal is governed through a parliamentary system of representative democracy, a feature the state shares with other Indian states. Universal suffrage is granted to residents. There are two branches of government. The legislature, the West Bengal Legislative Assembly, consists of elected members and special office bearers such as the Speaker and Deputy Speaker, who are elected by the members. Assembly meetings are presided over by the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker in the Speaker's absence. The judiciary is composed of the Calcutta High Court and a system of lower courts. Executive authority is vested in the Council of Ministers headed by the Chief Minister although the titular head of government is the Governor. The Governor is the head of state appointed by the President of India. The leader of the party or coalition with a majority in the Legislative Assembly is appointed as the Chief Minister by the Governor, and the Council of Ministers are appointed by the Governor on the advice of the Chief Minister. The Council of Ministers reports to the Legislative Assembly. The Assembly is unicameral with 295 Members of the Legislative Assembly, or MLAs,[2] including one nominated from the Anglo-Indian community. Terms of office run for five years, unless the Assembly is dissolved prior to the completion of the term. Auxiliary authorities known as panchayats, for which local body elections are regularly held, govern local affairs. The state contributes 42 seats to the Lok Sabha[3] and 16 seats to the Rajya Sabha of the Indian Parliament.[4]
History
The area's early history featured a succession of Indian empires, internal squabbling, and a tussle between Hinduism and Buddhism for dominance. Ancient Bengal was the site of several major Janapadas (kingdoms), while the earliest cities date back to the Vedic period. The region was part of several ancient pan-Indian empires, including the Mauryans and Guptas. It was also a bastion of regional kingdoms. The citadel of Gauda served as the capital of the Gauda Kingdom, the Buddhist Pala Empire (eighth to 11th century) and HinduSena Empire (11th–12th century). From the 13thcentury onward, the region was ruled by several sultans, powerful Hindu states, and Baro-Bhuyan landlords, until the beginning of British rule in the 18thcentury. The British East India Company cemented their hold on the region following the Battle of Plassey in 1757, and Calcutta served for many years as the capital of British India. The early and prolonged exposure to British administration resulted in an expansion of Western education, culminating in developments in science, institutional education, and social reforms in the region, including what became known as the Bengali Renaissance. A hotbed of the Indian independence movement through the early 20thcentury, Bengal was divided during India's independence in 1947 along religious lines into two separate entities: West Bengal, a state of India, and East Bengal, a province of Pakistan which later became independent Bangladesh.
Indian National Congress rule (1947–1962)
Princely state merge with West Bengal
In 1950, the Princely State of Koch Bihar merged with West Bengal after King Jagaddipendra Narayan had signed the Instrument of Accession with India.[5] In 1955, the former French enclave of Chandannagar, which had passed into Indian control after 1950, was integrated into West Bengal. Portions (the then Manbhum) of Bihar were subsequently merged with West Bengal and now this region serves as the district of Purulia. [citation needed]
During Bidhan Chandra Roy's Chief Minister-ship a number of manufacturing industries were set up in the state. He had a dream of developing West Bengal into one of the greatest regions of India. Bidhan Roy is often considered 'The Maker of Modern West Bengal' due to his key role in the founding of several institutions and five eminent cities in the state: Durgapur, Kalyani, Bidhannagar, Ashokenagar and Habra. Even after being the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Dr. B. C. Roy used to treat patients and never gave up his profession of a doctor. In 1954, a massive food crisis overtook the state.
In 1967 a peasant uprising broke out in Naxalbari, in northern West Bengal. The insurgency was led by hardline district-level CPI(M) leaders Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal. The Naxalbari movement was violently repressed by the West Bengal government. During the 1970s and 1980s, severe power shortages, strikes and a violent Marxist-Naxalite movement damaged much of the state's infrastructure, leading to a period of economic stagnation.
The Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 resulted in the influx of millions of refugees to West Bengal, causing significant strains on its infrastructure.[6] The government was credited for handling the refugee crisis fairly well by the International media. The 1974 smallpox epidemic killed thousands of people. West Bengal politics underwent a major change when the Left Front won the 1977 assembly election, defeating the incumbent Indian National Congress. The Left Front, led by Communist Party of India (Marxist), had governed for the state for the subsequent three and a half decades.[7]
1969 Assembly election
Fresh elections were held in West Bengal in 1969. CPI(M) emerged as the largest party in the West Bengal legislative assembly.[8] But with the active support of CPI and the Bangla Congress, Ajoy Mukherjee was returned as Chief Minister of the state. Mukherjee resigned on March 16, 1970 and the state was put under President's Rule.
Indian National Congress rule II (1972–1977)
Indian National Congress won the 1972 assembly election, and its leader Siddhartha Shankar Ray became the chief minister. He wanted to erase every single Naxal from West Bengal but his and his government's actions backfired, creating state-wide outrage against him and the then West Bengal Government. During this period, the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi proclaimed nationwide Emergency in 1975.
This period was marked by large scale violence as the police force battled with the Naxalites in the state of West Bengal.
The massacre in Marichjhanpi, which took place under CPI(M) rule in Bengal between January 26 and May 16, 1979, relates to the eviction of refugees from the reserved island of Marichjhanpi, Sunderbans, who had fled from East Pakistan thereby leading to the death of a sizable population among them.[9]
Out of the 14,388 families who deserted [for West Bengal], 10,260 families returned to their previous places … and the remaining 4,128 families perished in transit, died of starvation, exhaustion, and many were killed in Kashipur, Kumirmari, and Marichjhapi by police firings (Biswas 1982, 19).[10][11]
After leading the Left Front government for consecutive five terms, Jyoti Basu retired from active politics and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was appointed as his successor. In 2000, the Left Front came back to the power with Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee again assuming the office of the Chief Minister.[9]
The state's economic recovery gathered momentum after economic reforms in India were introduced in the early 1990s by the central government, aided by election of a new reformist Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in 2000. About during 2007, armed activists, and Maoists have been organizing terrorist attacks in some parts of the state,[12][13] while clashes with the administration have taken place at several sensitive places on the issue of industrial land acquisition.[14][15]
The Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government wanted to set up a Tata Nano factory in Singur, Hooghly.Tata Motors started constructing a factory to manufacture a car, Tata Nano which was estimated to cost $2,500. The small cars were scheduled to roll out of the factory by 2008. Singur was chosen by the Tata Motors among six sites offered by the West Bengal state government. The project faced massive opposition from displaced farmers. The unwilling farmers were given political support by West Bengal's then-opposition leader Mamata Banerjee. Banerjee's "Save Farmland" movement was supported by civil rights and human rights groups, legal bodies, and social activists like Medha Patkar, Anuradha Talwar, Arundhati Roy and Magsaysay and Jnanpith Award-winning author Mahasweta Devi. Leftist activists also shared the platform with Banerjee's Trinamool Congress. The Tatas finally decided to move out of Singur on 3 October 2008. On 7 October 2008, the Tatas announced that they would be setting up the Tata Nano plant in Sanand in Gujarat after Ratan Tata received a call from the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi.
The Nandigram violence was an incident in Nandigram, West Bengal where, under the orders of the Left Front government, more than 4,000 heavily armed police stormed the Nandigram area with the aim of stamping out protests against the West Bengal government's plans to expropriate 10,000 acres (40km2) of land for a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to be developed by the Indonesian-based Salim Group. The area of Nandigram had turned into an internal-security threat for the country.[16] The Trinamool Congress, collaborating with the Maoists, had isolated the entire area from the rest of the country, by cutting up all the roads and blocking them by tree trunks. Weapons were being collected and stored for an armed rebellion.[17] The villagers were brainwashed against the Government and the progressive scheme. However, the shootings, in recent developments have proved to be a conspiracy of the TMC and Maoists alike. Indeed the police had to resort to firing when the armed mob refused to disperse even after much persuasion and tear gassing and started attacking the police. The then Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya was awarded a clean-chit for non-involvement in the Nandigram violence by the CBI.[18] The police shot 13 villagers dead and one died from a very suspicious knife-attack, thus sparking controversies whether the police were, in the least, the ones to fire. At least 30 police officers were injured in the incident.
The SEZ controversy started when the government of West Bengal decided that the Salim Group of Indonesia[19][20][21] would set up a chemical hub under the SEZ policy at Nandigram, a rural area in the district of Purba Medinipur. The villagers took over the administration of the area and all the roads to the villages were cut off.
During the 2019 Indian General election, the BJP won 18 Lok Sabha seats sweeping the vote share of the Congress and the Left while the TMC, in spite of losing seats, increased their vote share. But in the 2021 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election, TMC secured a massive victory of 215 seats out of 294 seats.
↑ Delimitation Commission (15 February 2006). "Notification: order no. 18"(PDF). New Delhi: Election Commission of India. pp.23–25. Archived from the original(PDF) on 13 August 2011. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
↑ "Composition of Rajya Sabha"(PDF). Rajya Sabha at work. New Delhi: Rajya Sabha Secretariat. pp.24–25. Archived from the original(PDF) on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 15 February 2012.
↑ Dr. Sailen Debnath, ed. Social and Political Tensions In North Bengal since 1947, ISBN81-86860-23-1.
The All India Trinamool Congress is an Indian political party that is mainly influential in the state of West Bengal. It was founded by Mamata Banerjee on 1 January 1998 as a breakaway faction from the Indian National Congress and rapidly rose to prominence in the politics of West Bengal under her leadership. Presently, it is ruling the state of West Bengal beside being the third-largest party in India in terms of number of MPs just after the BJP and INC.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is an Indian communist politician and a former member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), who served as the 7th Chief Minister of West Bengal from 2000 to 2011. In a political career over 5 decades, he became one of the senior leaders of Communist Party of India (Marxist) during his regime.
Mamata Banerjee is an Indian politician who is serving as the eighth and current chief minister of the Indian state of West Bengal since 20 May 2011, the first woman to hold the office. Having served multiple times as a Union Cabinet Minister, Mamata Banerjee became the Chief Minister of West Bengal for the first time in 2011. She founded the All India Trinamool Congress in 1998 after separating from the Indian National Congress, and became its second chairperson later in 2001. She is often referred to as Didi.
Nandigram Violence refers to the violence in Nandigram, West Bengal, India, in 2007 due to the land acquisition for a project taken up by the CPI(M)-led Government of West Bengal to create a chemical hub, a type of special economic zone (SEZ). The policy led to an emergency in the region, and 14 people died in a police shooting.
The history of West Bengal began in 1947, when the Hindu-dominated western part of British Bengal Province became the Indian state of West Bengal.
Suvendu Adhikari is an Indian politician from Bharatiya Janata Party who is the current Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly since 2021 and a member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly from Nandigram Assembly constituency since 2021 and from Contai South from 2006 to 2009.
Jadavpur Assembly constituency is a Legislative Assembly constituency in the Indian state of West Bengal which lies mostly in Kolkata district, while a fraction of it is in South 24 Parganas district.
Nandigram Assembly constituency is an assembly constituency in Purba Medinipur district in the Indian state of West Bengal.
Assembly election was held in Indian state of West Bengal in 2011 to elect the members of West Bengal Legislative Assembly as the term of the incumbent government was about to expire naturally. The election was held in six phases between 18 April and 10 May 2011 for all the 294 seats of the Assembly.
Becharam Manna is an Indian politician representing Trinamool Congress. He won the Haripal seat by a margin of 22,000 votes, in the 2011 West Bengal state assembly elections. Becharam Manna is one of the architects of Singur Land movement and leader of mass movement against the then Left Front Government. He along with his close associates worked at the grassroot level to organise distressed farmers, bargadars, sharecroppers, agricultural laborer's etc who were aggrieved and showing protest, dharnas, rally at the work site to gain the mass and media attention. The Singur seat was retained by the sitting Trinamool Congress MLA, Rabindranath Bhattacharya. He also became Minister of State of the Agriculture Department, Government of West Bengal for few days. and he later joined BJP and contested from Singur Assembly Constituency as BJP candidate in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly Election in the year 2021 but he got defeated and Becharam Manna elected from Singur Assembly Constituency in the year 2021. Becharam Manna is well versed with three tire Panchyati Raj System. He contested in several Panchyat elections. In the early days of his political career, he was contested in the three-tire Panchyat election and first time elected as Gram Panchyat member of Singur-II Gram Panchyat in the year 1993. Then he again participated in three-tire Panchyat election in the year 2008 and elected as a member in the Singur Panchyat Samity and then he became Sahakari-Sabapati of Singur Panchyat Samity in the Year 2008. After that for the first time he contested in the West Bengal Assembly Election in the year 2011 from Haripal Assembly Constituency as TMC candidate and elected from that constituency. He also became a member of the Cabinet as Minister-Of-state constituted under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee, who defeated CPIM and ended 34 years of ruling. During 2012 to 2015, he served as Minister-Of-State of different dept. of Government Of West Bengal e.g. Agriculture Dept., Agriculture-Marketing dept., Land and Land Reforms dept.
Subrata Mukherjee was an Indian politician who was cabinet minister of the government of West Bengal and sitting member of West Bengal Legislative Assembly. He was a member of All India Trinamool Congress. He was also the 35th Mayor of Kolkata from 2000 to 2005.
Rabindranath Bhattacharjee is an Indian politician. He is also an MLA, elected from the Singur constituency in the 2011 West Bengal state assembly election. Bhattacharjee better known as “Mastermoshai” which means teacher.
The West Bengal Legislative Assembly election, 2001 was held in Indian state of West Bengal to elect 294 members of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly.
Legislative Assembly election was held in 2016 for the 294 seats of the Vidhan Sabha in the state of West Bengal in India. The All India Trinamool Congress under Mamata Banerjee won 211 seats, and thus was reelected with an enhanced majority. Like in the 2011 election, the poll was held in six phases, with the first phase divided into two days. The first phase was held in Naxalite-Maoist affected Red corridor areas with two polling dates: 4 April and 11 April. The other phases were held on 17, 21, 25, 30 April and 5 May. The result of the election was declared on 19 May.
The Left Front is an alliance of left-wing political parties in the Indian state of West Bengal. It was formed in January 1977, the founding parties being the Communist Party of India (Marxist), All India Forward Bloc, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, the Marxist Forward Bloc, the Revolutionary Communist Party of India and the Biplobi Bangla Congress. Other parties joined in later years, most notably the Communist Party of India.
The 2021 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election was the 17th quinquennial legislative election held in West Bengal, to elect all 294 members of West Bengal Legislative Assembly. This electoral process of 292 seats unfolded between 27 March to 29 April 2021, taking place in eight phases. Voting for the two remaining constituencies was delayed to 30 September 2021.
Paresh Chandra Adhikary is an Indian politician from AITC(till August 2022). In May 2021, he was elected as the member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly from Mekliganj.
The 2007-2008 Nandigram violence was one of the major incidents which saw an alleged involvement of Maoists or more precisely the cadres, armed activists and guerrillas of Communist Party of India (Maoist). Trouble started after the Government of West Bengal led by Left front tried to acquire the agricultural land in Nandigram to allow Indonesia's Salem group to set up a hub for chemical industries. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the then chief minister of West Bengal, accused the Maoists for the violence during the Nandigram. Afterwards, they made a report that was submitted to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Afterwards in 2014, CPI (Maoists) confirmed that they were active during the Nandigram protests and termed it as "revolutionary people’s agitation".
The Communist Party of India (Marxist), West Bengal is the West Bengal state wing of Communist Party of India (Marxist) and a recognised national party. The party has been the longest formally the governing party in West Bengal Legislative Assembly from 1977 to 2011 and has significant representation of the state in Rajya Sabha. It leads the Left Front and Secular Democratic Alliance along with Indian National Congress.
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