It's Mamata versus the rest in West Bengal

It’s a war in Bengal. Between Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, which has had an unbroken run of three terms or 15 years in the state, and the united might of the BJP, her Goliath-esque primary adversary, and all the Central agencies it can summon at the flick of a finger.

Even the Election Commission of India (ECI), the administrator and supposedly unquestionable arbiter of ‘free and fair’ elections in the country has outdone itself in Bengal, its exploits here going far beyond the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls that has sent citizen-voters scrambling all over the country and targeted communities fearing worse.

At the time of going to press, the first phase of polling was over in West Bengal and the second phase was due (on 29 April). Union home minister Amit Shah is camping in Kolkata, reportedly until campaigning for phase 2 comes to an end on 27 April.

Playing the role of the BJP’s key strategist and on-ground overseer, he is also waving his stick with characteristic panache. At one of the rallies before the phase 1 voting, he declared “the EC has deployed CAPF (Central Armed Police Forces). If Mamata Banerjee’s goons try to disturb the poll process, I will ensure they are hanged upside down after 4 May”.

The security bandobast is unprecedented. The CAPF deployment includes troops from the CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, SSB, NSG and Assam Rifles, which has put a spring in the stride of BJP workers, and by the same token curbed the exuberance of TMC workers.

Even so, the TMC cadre have not quite lost their old spunk, as BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, out campaigning with personal security guards and armed paramilitary personnel in tow, found out. In a scene that will be remembered, Adhikari is seen glaring at a man and shouting, 'Jai Shri Ram'. The man glares back and bellows 'Joy Bangla!'

Paramilitary forces started arriving in the state a month before polling. On 20 April, The Telegraph reported the deployment of 240,000 CAPF personnel (2,407 companies) for phase 1. To put the number in context, 288 companies were deployed in Manipur at the peak of ethnic violence in 2023.

TMC MP and former journalist Sagarika Ghose wrote in The Print: ‘The BJP has descended on Bengal like an occupying force… hundreds of helicopters, thousands of cars with Z-plus security, workers bussed in from Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, hundreds of companies of central forces and armoured vehicles of the kind deployed in active conflict zones.’

Bullet-proof armoured vehicles commandeered from different parts of the country (including Kashmir) are rolling down the roads as a ‘confidence-building measure’. Troops are marching to establish ‘area domination’.

The CPI(M) — which ruled West Bengal continuously for 34 years (1977–2011) but isn’t in contention anymore, and eager to see the end of Mamata’s ‘reign of terror’ — is not complaining. CPI(M) leader Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, contesting from the Jadavpur seat, welcomed the steps to restrain ‘TMC goons’. “Those who couldn’t vote earlier due to TMC intimidation will now do so fearlessly,” he said.

But Congress leader Pradip Bhattacharya questioned the need to instil fear among the people.

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The ECI has been in overdrive ever since the election was notified and poll dates announced on 15 March. At 4.00 am on 16 March, the state’s seniormost officers — the chief secretary, home secretary, director-general of police, Kolkata police commissioner and ADG (law and order) — were removed in one stroke.

The purge continued, with as many as 483 state government officials removed from their posts and ordered to stay away from any kind of election duty. To contextualise again, the total number of officials transferred before polling in the other three poll-bound states (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam) is 23.

Even replacement police inspectors have been handpicked by the ECI. “The ECI may have information that some officials are beholden to the ruling party and could influence the election, but how did it decide which officials would replace them? Who supplied the names?” asks a retired bureaucrat.

Mamata Banerjee herself has complained that the returning officer in her constituency of Bhabanipur was replaced by a state government employee from Nandigram (known to be close to Suvendu Adhikari), who refused her permission to hold a meeting in her own constituency!

The ECI has also directed that all civic volunteers and village police personnel — not government employees but poorly paid political appointees — be confined to police lines on polling day and not deployed on election duty. This is akin to RSS volunteers being asked to sit out the elections.

I-PAC, the firm working for the TMC in the state, is possibly the first political consultancy to have been targeted during an election. Raids and notices from the Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax Department intensified in March. Days before phase 1, three I-PAC directors were summoned by the ED to New Delhi and one of them was arrested, reportedly forcing the consultancy to ask employees to go on leave until 11 May.

The SIR has disenfranchised at least 27 lakh voters in West Bengal, a disproportionate number of them Muslims and women. The ECI has bypassed electoral registration officers (EROs) in the state and made use of special observers (4 in Uttar Pradesh but 30 in West Bengal), micro-observers (zero in the rest of the country, 8,000 in West Bengal), 600 retired and serving judicial officers (not deployed in any other state).

The ECI also came up with software to detect ‘logical discrepancies’ (not found anywhere else!), without disclosing the identity of the company contracted and the basis for engaging them.

The 19 appellate tribunals, set up on the instruction of the Supreme Court to hear appeals of voters ‘under adjudication’, had heard only 138 appeals by 21 April and restored the names of 136.

A ‘straight talk to TMC’ tweet from the ECI singled out the party for allegedly vitiating past elections with violence, booth jamming, intimidation and inducement. A returning officer in Kolkata posted an equally offensive tweet asking people to keep Burnol and Boroline (popular ointments for burns and bruises) handy on counting day. No prizes for guessing who was being addressed.

There has been a flurry of never-before directives issued by the chief electoral officer, West Bengal. For instance, a week-long ban on the sale of liquor throughout the state, instead of the usual 48 hours before polling ends. There is even a directive banning house guests for two days before the election!

Most curiously, days before the first phase of polling on 23 April, the ECI announced it had added seven lakh new voters. At a time when 27 lakh voters are running from pillar to post to get their names restored to the voter rolls, where did these new voters come from?