By Arun Srivastava
The rightist saffron ecosystem has launched a blitzkrieg on Mamata Banerjee in its bid to severely dent her political image on the eve of the West Bengal Assembly elections. In order to accomplish its objective of demolishing the West Bengal CM’s political career, the saffron brigade has been riding on both the judiciary as well as the parliamentary system. On April 7, while the Parliament rejected the impeachment motion moved against the Chief Election Commissioner, CEC, Gyanesh Kumar, moved in both houses of Parliament signed by 193 MPs, a day after, on April 8, CEC Gyanesh Kumar rejected the allegation of TMC that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was a “farcical exercise” designed to exclude legitimate voters, particularly the Bengali-speaking people of the state.
While the rejection of the motion to remove Gyanesh Kumar has been a major setback and a “rude shock” to opposition parties, the April 8 incident, with CEC Gyanesh adopting a hard posture against TMC, reportedly asking the TMC delegation of MPs, including Rajya Sabha MPs Derek O Brien, Sagarika Ghose, Saket Gokhale and Menaka Guruswamy, to “Get lost”, leaves little scope for any speculation about the significance of this election. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has already accused CEC Gyanesh Kumar of working in favour of the BJP, with designs to delete 91 lakh genuine voters and include outsiders in the electoral rolls, leading to massive “disenfranchisement” of voters in West Bengal.
It was expected that April 8 meeting between the TMC MPs and Gyanesh would expectedly yield some result. But it proved to be a mirage. The meeting did not resolve the dispute, with the ECI dismissing TMC allegations as baseless and highlighting that electoral roll revisions were strictly governed by law and judicial review. The TMC team members alleged that ECI has “blood on its hands”.
The interaction between the TMC delegation and the Election Commission reportedly lasted only seven minutes, with party sources claiming they were given little time to present their case. Their questions regarding the deletion of 91 lakh voters during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal went unanswered. The delegation raised concerns about the high rate of deletions in Muslim-majority districts (such as Murshidabad, Malda, and North 24 Parganas) and among communities such as Matuas, labelling it a “vote theft” and deliberate targeting of a specific community.
Victory or defeat of Mamata Banerjee in the West Bengal assembly election is of lesser consequence than what has been allowed to transpire in the name of the Special Intensive Revision. It has become obvious that RSS and BJP have been manipulating and subverting most of the constitutional and democratic institutions and platforms, such as the office of the Election Commission of India, as well as, to some extent the judiciary, including the apex court, thereby making people skeptical of the future of electoral democracy in the country.
One thing is absolutely clear that if the BJP succeeds in its mission in Bengal,, not only Bengal but India, will be faced with the threat of losing its pluralistic character. If BJP-ruled states like Bihar, UP and Maharashtra are anything to go by, it is obvious that secular, pluralist forms of governance taking into account the competing needs of every member of society, would be binned in favour of majoritarian, communal rule, corruption and crony capitalism at every stage.
Pluralism in politics and the state is a theory and practice that views power not as concentrated in a single, absolute entity (like a sovereign monarch or a single class), but as distributed among various competing interest groups, associations, and organizations. It highlights that modern society is complex and that decisions result from negotiation and bargaining among these diverse groups.
Often cited as a pluralistic democracy, Indian governance incorporates diversity in language, religion, and culture, utilizing federalism and minority protections. The RSS-BJP practicing politics of majoritarianism are determined to finish it. A pluralistic state thrives on negotiation and competition among many groups, attempting to manage conflict rather than impose a single, unified will, although it often operates as a “deformed polyarchy” where inequalities exist.
With Supreme Court washing its hands off from taking a comprehensive stand in the matter of denial of voting rights to 27 lakh excluded voters in West Bengal, the road is clear for BJP getting upper hand in many traditional seats of TMC where a large number of Muslims and Dalits have been deleted from electoral rolls.. It is indeed shocking that the SC has allowed this scandal to play out wherein 27 lakh voters, who were found to be legal in the mapping, would be debarred from voting on the flimsy ground that there is not enough time to include their names in the updated electoral roll.
Moreover, it is equally astounding that the legitimate claims of roughly 27 lakh voters, for inclusion of their names in electoral roll as they were put in the “doubtful” category under Gyanesh Kumar-led SIR, have been rejected by the Supreme Court in a cavalier fashion, stating that they could always vote in a future election!
The Supreme Court has adamantly refused to agree to the request of the State of West Bengal to wait for a few more days before freezing the electoral roll at the midnight of April 6 so that many of the over 27 lakh voters, who failed to convince judicial officers that there were no ‘logical discrepancies’ in their details provided under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the roll, get a chance to vote in the Assembly elections on April 23 and April 29. The apex court declining to consider government plea to direct the 19 appellate tribunals to pass interim orders allowing at least certain categories of excluded voters to vote, saying “we do not want to rush it”, has given rise to wider speculation in the social and political circles about its intentions.
The relief was sought for deleted but “mapped” voters, however, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal citing the shortage of time for the tribunals to dispose of all the appeals. This decision of the apex court obviously brings to fore the earlier suggestions that the SIR should be deferred for future as it was a complex issue and needed more time. But the Supreme Court went ahead with the hearing. The people were sceptical that the SIR exercise would be at all transparent and fair, and their worst fears have now been confirmed.
The Supreme Court bench, comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul M. Pancholi, orally said: “The tribunals will proceed with the hearings. We do not want to rush it, but we need to freeze the list somewhere.” But the question arises since these people would not be able to exercise their basic democratic right which is the right to vote, what is even the use of having this nature of hearing.
Dipankar Bhattacharya, the General Secretary of CPI(ML) Liberation, holds that there is urgent need to defeat the conspiracy to steal the voting right of the People. He says: “With nominations for the two-phase West Bengal Assembly elections drawing to a close, the electoral roll has been declared ‘frozen’ for these elections. And with this, electoral democracy, as we have known it since the first elections held in 1952, has also been shelved in the deep freeze. By the time SIR covers the whole of India, the world would have witnessed the biggest ever electoral purge.”
Bhattacharya added: “In West Bengal, the ECI applied an extra set of filters to detect what it called cases of ‘logical discrepancy’. Using untested software and AI tools, the EC claimed to detect some 150 million such cases, eventually narrowing it down to nearly 100 million. These voters were all asked to attend hearings and submit additional documents. Another half a million deletions followed and six million were referred to adjudication. The task of electoral roll finalisation quietly became a judicial business. The adjudication of these six million voters has produced an excessive rate of exclusion: nearly forty five percent. The pattern has been glaring even in districts with average levels of Muslim population.” (IPA Service)
