2024: A year of protests and electoral status quo in West Bengal

Protests, political turmoil, and social issues in West Bengal in 2024, including rape case fallout and electoral outcomes.

On August 9, thousands joined former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on his final journey from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) party headquarters on the Alimuddin Street to Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital, where the body of the veteran Marxist leader was donated for medical research.

Not far from the medical college, the body of a post graduate trainee doctor was recovered from the seminar room R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital on the same day. While the authorities initially tried to hush up the death as suicide, the gruesome injuries on the body and post mortem confirmed sexual assault and murder.

The rape and murder of the 31-year-old doctor inside a State-run health facility not only sent shockwaves across the country but triggered unprecedented protests in West Bengal. People from all walks of life, junior doctors and healthcare professionals remained on the streets of Kolkata and different parts of the State for months. The cessation of work as well as hunger strikes by the junior doctors brought the Trinamool Congress government on its knees and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was forced to reshuffle the top brass of Kolkata police and officials of the State Health Department.

The public anger over the rape and murder of the doctor was clearly the highlight for the year 2024 in West Bengal. The protests were not unique in terms of intensity but also that it involved spontaneous participation of the people who did not allow the agitation that raged for months to be hijacked by the Opposition parties. The ‘Reclaim the Night’ protests by women groups and marches by right activists gave a voice to the civil society in West Bengal that has for the past several decades been divided on political lines.

While the trial in the case is yet to conclude, parents of the deceased doctors and a section of protesters are saying that they have lost faith in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which is investigating the crime. The protests, however, have had far reaching social and political implications. In at least two cases of sexual assault and murder of minor girls, the West Bengal police completed investigation within weeks and within two months the accused were awarded death penalty by local courts.

The year 2024 in West Bengal had began with protests by handful of women at Sandeshkhali against allegations of land grab and sexual assault against local Trinamool Congress leaders. The protests and resistance by the women in February 2024 had resulted in the arrest of local Trinamool Congress strongman Sheikh Shahjahan and his aides who had allegedly tortured poor fishermen and farmers on the island. The issue of Sandeshkhali and allegations of sexual assault had become poll plank of the Bharatiya Janata Party for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in West Bengal. 

Despite a high pitched campaign by the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections, the Trinamool Congress not only held its ground but improved its performance and won 29 of the 42 seats. The BJP’s tally was reduced to 12 Lok Sabha seats and the Congress won one seat.