Trinamool Congress has erred in not just confronting the West Bengal State Election Commission but also launching personal attacks on the poll panel chief
The decision by the Supreme Court in the West Bengal panchayat election case is a landmark in that it establishes the primacy of autonomy and compels the political system to accept that it must function within the rules established by the Constitution. The decision has three parts: Rescheduling of the panchayat election, a five-phase process and sufficient security to ensure that the voter is free to exercise her independent choice on polling day.
The order sweeps aside the gambits deployed by the regime in West Bengal to take control of a process that can only be credible and legitimate if it is conducted with total autonomy. In upholding the authority of the West Bengal State Election Commission, the Supreme Court has underlined the fundamental requirement for free and fair elections. It is ironic that it has done so by ensuring the presence of sufficient coercive power to intimidate and counter the mischief that seems intrinsic to political management of elections. It is also a grim acknowledgement, albeit implicit, that in West Bengal the law and order machinery is toxic with political contamination. The climbing death toll during campaigning for the panchayat election and the politically-induced violence in which all political parties have suffered losses, but some like the Communist Party of India (Marxist) have suffered more than others, testifies to the inability of the State administration to ensure law and order as the basic minimum requirement of a functioning democracy.
It isn’t entertaining to observe the acrobatic feats worthy of the most adept of contortionists, undertaken by the Trinamool Congress to assert that the Supreme Court's decision was indeed the outcomes most ardently desired by Ms Mamata Banerjee. Indeed, the Chief Minister made no effort to conceal her chagrin.
It is tricky to gauge whether the Opposition is correct in accusing Ms Banerjee personally and the Trinamool Congress generally of scuppering the panchayat election by trying to time the process to its political advantage. For Ms Banerjee and her babbling associates insist that their intentions were honourable and it is the Opposition in combination with the SEC that sought to sabotage the election. What stands out in all this is the desperate effort by the regime to drag in the SEC and blame it for doing its job.
In converting the ugly confrontations into a personal affront, Ms Banerjee and her associates, including the State's Panchayat Minister Subrata Mukherjee, have been reduced to lashing out at the SEC in personal terms. The abuse of the person, in this case the State Election Commissioner, is indefensible. Ms Meera Pandey's personal credentials as an autonomous authority have been repeatedly attacked, first by sundry Trinamool Congress leaders, then by the Panchayat Minister, then in Calcutta High Court and finally by the Chief Minister.
This alone is a compelling reason for the intervention of the Supreme Court to uphold the autonomy of the SEC. The verbal barracking deployed against the SEC is indicative of the intensity of the political pressure that was exerted from the point when the Chief Minister, regardless of what the law is, declared that the election should be held in “winter”. It was an uncalled for attempt to assume control of a process that is protected against just such political opportunism by the Constitution. The Trinamool Congress and the Panchayat Minister's reiteration of the idea that the State Government is the final decision maker in the case of the panchayat election was a brazen attempt to overturn the structure that is in place to prevent political contamination.
West Bengal's SEC was unable to prevent political intimidation during the nomination process. But with the Supreme Court's order backed by the guarantee that the Centre and the West Bengal Government shall put at the disposal of the SEC a prescribed number of armed and unarmed police and security personnel, it now is possible that on the five days of the panchayat election, the voter will feel safer. The sense of safety is fragile, and it is for the State Government to decide how it will tackle violence if it breaks out after the election. It can shrilly shift blame to the Opposition or it can contain the confrontation as it did with notable success in 2012 after winning the State Assembly poll.