Kolkata, July 21
As Trinamool Congress is all set to observe its annual Martyrs’ Day rally in Kolkata on Monday, the last before the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections, seven major challenges seem to be haunting the ruling party in the state.
The broader areas of these challenges are appeasement politics, rampant corruption, rising incidents of crime against women, legal jibes, and the pathetic state of state finance.
The first challenge is the continuing propaganda and the public perception that Trinamool Congress and the state government are indulging in appeasement politics, which was evident from the communal riots in Murshidabad, Malda, and Maheshtala, among others. Besides facing this charge of indulging in appeasement politics, the ruling party is also fighting the negative propaganda of indulging in getting illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators enlisted as voters in the state.
The second challenge is the loss of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching jobs in various state-run schools across the state following an order from a division bench of the Supreme Court in April this year, which cancelled the jobs due to proven and gross irregularities in the recruitment process.
Although the West Bengal government has started the process for fresh recruitment to fill up those vacant posts, even that process continues to be entangled with some legal hurdles posing uncertainty over the entire process.
The third challenge is the ghastly rape and murder of a woman doctor of the state-run R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata within the hospital premises in August last year.
Although the legal process in the matter is currently ongoing simultaneously at the Supreme Court, Calcutta High Court and lower court in Kolkata, what is keeping the ruling party in the state haunting is the public perception that there had been attempts by an influential section within the state administration to protect the main brains in the larger conspiracy behind the crime.
In this matter, Trinamool Congress is also facing the controversies over allegedly vindictive departmental actions, including the arbitrary transfer of the junior doctors who became the lead faces of the movement on this rape and murder issue.
The fourth challenge is the recent rape of a law student within her college premises in Kasba in South Kolkata earlier this year, where all three arrested accused were active associates of Trinamool Congress’ students’ wing, Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP).
Since the incident, the ruling party in the state is facing the orchestrated negative propaganda by the opposition parties that over the last 14 years, the different colleges and universities in the state have become carefree zones for the strongmen associated with the students’ wing of the ruling party.
The fifth challenge for the state government, the impact of which is bound to be on the state’s ruling dispensation, will be the inevitable contempt of court to be faced by the administration over its failure to clear 25 per cent of the dearness allowance arrear dues to the state government employees, which was to be done by June 30, as directed by the Supreme Court earlier this year.
Although the West Bengal government has filed a review petition in the matter to the apex court, legal experts feel that the review petition comes with no guarantee of protection against contempt of court for not abiding by the apex court order.
The sixth challenge, which is both political and financial, is the charges against the state government and the ruling dispensation of indulging in massive irregularities in the implementation of centrally sponsored projects.
On one hand, the BJP is making constant propaganda on how funds sent by the Union government for the welfare of common people were being siphoned by the ruling party leaders for their personal luxury. On the other hand, the Union government has logically stopped further payments under different Centrally-sponsored schemes, thus keeping the state government in a virtually paralysed state in running the show.
The seventh and final challenge is the pathetic state of the state exchequer amid huge accumulated debt, a high debt-to-GDP ratio, limited resources for the state’s own tax revenue, and no scope for attracting big-ticket investment in both the manufacturing and services sectors.
