Role reversals in Bengal's power play

TMC workers manhandle EC staff as Mamata Banerjee plays victim

FirstPost, 10 April, 2014

Mamata Banerjee is not done with provoking the Election Commission. This morning, Trinamool Congress workers manhandled EC functionaries at Manikchawk in Malda district. Yesterday, TMC workers burnt an effigy of Deputy Election Commissioner in-charge of Bengal Vinod Zutshi right outside the state secretariat and, at a rally in Burdwan, Banerjee urged the voters to "avenge the insult of Bengal by Delhi".

After daring the EC to arrest her on Monday, Banerjee relented and transferred the officials as per the EC order once the Commission gave her an ultimatum on Tuesday. She would not risk postponement of polls or President’s rule in the state. But she did not back out. Reiterating that Zutshi was misleading the EC, she declared that she would write to the Commission seeking an explanation for its “politically motivated” decision.

The Commission, it is learnt, is mulling action against her and has asked for detailed video footage of her speeches and the attacks on its staff by TMC workers. That will suit didi fine. Banerjee knows that she appeals to her electorate best as a rebel and a victim.

Just three years ago, after dislodging the Left Front in 2011, Mamata Banerjee credited the Election Commission for her triumph. “This is the victory of the people. They have got their voting rights and I am grateful to the Election Commission for their full support,” she told the media.

This Monday, seething at the EC’s decision to transfer eight top bureaucrats, Banerjee trained her guns at Zutshi. “An officer who has a case against him, how can you send him [to Bengal]? This is a conspiracy,” she fumed at an election rally.

In June 2013, the Supreme Court stayed the non-bailable warrant pending against Zutshi for leasing out land to a private company. A Jaipur district court issued the warrant in 2011, the year Zutshi looked after the Assembly polls in Bengal and earned Banerjee’s gratitude.

How the tables have been turned.

This election season, the EC has replaced 61 top officials in five states so far. Nowhere else it has met with such resistance. Not without reason. Successive SC orders have underlined the Commission’s constitutional authority since former CEC TN Seshan started cleaning up elections in the 1990s, most famously in Lalu Prasad’s Bihar. Jyoti Basu called Seshan a “megalomaniac” before falling in line. James Lyngdoh dragged the mighty Narendra Modi to court and foiled his move to hold early state polls after the 2002 riots.

More recently, Bengal CPI(M) heavyweights Biman Bose and Subhash Chakraborty had to apologize for taking the EC on after the latter threatened to postpone Assembly polls in 2006. In fact, Banerjee was all praise for the Commission in 2006, 2009 and, of course, 2011. Once in power, her party co-opted the Left’s infamous election management machinery. In a role reversal, the EC suddenly became the villain.

In 2013, the TMC government wanted to hold Panchayat polls simultaneously across the state. But SEC Mira Pande insisted on phased elections under the watch of central forces. Banerjee took on Pande but perhaps without looking into her past. In 2008, the Left Front government had a similar plan but Pande stood her ground.

Last year, the fight reached the apex court via high court and the state was forced to toe the EC line. But not before MP and chief of TMC’s legal cell Kalyan Banerjee stooped to make crude personal remarks against Pande. "She needs the CRPF on her left, on her right, in the middle and on all sides. She seems to have fallen in love with the CRPF," he said at a rally in Burdwan. Unsurprisingly, he was not chastised by his chief minister.

Since the EC received too many complaints from the Opposition parties, Zutshi cautioned senior officials in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls this January. Immediately, he drew flak from TMC Panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee. “Where were they (EC officials) who are now shooting their mouth off during the Left rule?” he mocked.

To be fair, Monday’s EC order was unprecedented in the sense that it unilaterally named the replacements for the officials the EC wanted removed. Though there is no legal obligation, the Commission usually asks the state government for options for each replacement.

The Left legacy of political indoctrination is so deep in the state bureaucracy that the EC might have had reasons to believe that the government would offer a list of yes-men as replacement options. At the same time, the state’s argument that officials unfamiliar with critical areas such as Jangalmahal may find it difficult to get a grip on the ground before polls can’t be discounted altogether.

However, more than a perceived slight to her authority or concerns for law and order, the spectre of losing what many call ‘stage advantage’ in certain key constituencies is what fuelled Banerjee’s virulent outburst. The prospect of emerging as the third largest party in Lok Sabha and the tight four-corner fight at hand has made her edgy.

But didi has history on her side. Be it Lalu or Modi, every time a politician has confronted the EC, his votes have only consolidated. For all her fight with SEC Pande, TMC swept the Panchayat polls last year. There is a method to her madness, after all.