West Bengal's notoriously confrontational and violent politics is a nightmare for any election machinery tasked with holding the polls
It was Mamata Banerjee's promise of poriborton to wrap West Bengal in distinctions that would restore the State to its former glory as the first among equals. She has done so by sending the first football player to the lok Sabha. He may be a political non-entity, but Prasun Banerjee will go down in the annals of parliamentary history as a member of distinction.
The historic Howrah by-election victory may acquire a different notoriety despite the success of Ms Banerjee in snatching a win from the jaws of serious uncertainty. The Trinamool Congress faced what she admitted was a tough challenge, with no partners and a very hostile Opposition that now claims that the victory was a gift of the BJP that did not put up a candidate. What is significant is that despite the usual complaints of rigging in some places, the election was deemed ‘free and fair’ and the law and order situation did not deteriorate to a point where bloodied bodies were paraded by the Congress and the CPI(M) to prove that violence by the ruling party had distorted the outcomes.
logically, if and only if, the law and order situation is fully under control can elections be free and fair. With sprawling constituencies, vast numbers of voters and a tradition of faking the mandate by a variety of methods, organising a fault-free election is a complex exercise that needs to be conducted with precision in order to obtain results that cannot be challenged.
West Bengal's notoriously confrontational and violent politics is a nightmare for whichever election machinery is organising the collection of a mandate. The panchayat election is turning out to be the mother of all battles in that respect, with a new front that opened up thanks to the inability of the West Bengal Government and the West Bengal State Election Commission to resolve how the election would be organised and who was finally responsible. It is not difficult to trace the root of the problem; the Trinamool Congress wanted the panchayat election to be held to suit its political purpose, whereas the SEC stuck to the provisions of the law.
For free and fair election, the SEC felt that the minimum requirement was the deployment of armed security forces from the very first stage — collection of nomination papers and the filing of nominations. This is an indication that the overall law and order situation in West Bengal is poor. Though this judgment has irritated the Trinamool Congress, provoking its Minister for Panchayats to sneer that people who need security to file nominations should not contest, is nevertheless an indictment. The nervousness of the Trinamool Congress and its desperate bid to establish its credentials is evident in the Chief Minister's gesture of urging the media to verify a letter sent by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs. The gesture masks the problem.
How Ms Banerjee is going to achieve that happy state of affairs is unclear because the West Bengal Government is looking for ways to duck the problem. At one point, it has complained that it does not have the requisite number of policemen and at another point it has complained that if all the personnel required by the SEC were indeed to be released for poll duty then development work would be hampered in the State. The more Ms Banerjee complains about the unreasonable demands of the SEC, the more she proves the point that the conditions necessary to ensure free and fair elections do not exist in West Bengal.
This is not the first time that a Government in the State has complained loudly about the demands of the Election Commission. Under the CPI(M), the Government moaned and groaned over TN Seshan's diktat that voters identity cards were mandatory. The then West Bengal Government complained about the cost, exactly as Ms Banerjee's Government has complained about the cost of deploying Central armed security forces.
Anyone who wants to contest should be free to do so and the State must provide the necessary conditions for that to happen. Ms Banerjee has to take responsibility for general law and order to enable the SEC to conduct a free and fair election.