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Many in West Bengal are still pinching themselves from the 4th of last month to believe that they are actually in a Bharatiya Janata Party ruled state – something that was unthinkable until it really happened. Everyone could realise that the record turnout of almost 92.47% of voters meant that Bengal was angry and was sure to vote unambiguously in any one direction. Some incorrigible optimists (mea culpa) believed that the angst was directed at the unabashed alliance between the Election Commission and the BJP, with the indulgence of a Supreme Court. 

Never before in history had one man in Delhi, the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), tormented so many and forced so many lakhs of humans in this state (including the old, the infirm, and hapless women) to stand in long queues to prove that they do exist — belying his deeply malevolent belief to the contrary. Never before had a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls needed to be done with such haste and a malicious predetermined agenda to eliminate certain targeted troublesome voters. One has never imagined that so many unheard-of terms like ‘unmapped’, ‘under adjudication’ and ‘logical discrepancies’ would disguise his booby traps laid to disenfranchise millions. India will also remember the present Chief Justice of India for his extreme forbearance and his sweeping legitimisation of an unprecedented roll revision, despite the process that entailed a dozen depredations by the CEC. It will also never forget his “cockroach” comment as he rose in fierce defence of a questionable establishment. 

In 41 years of service, which includes conducting two parliamentary elections in West Bengal as the Chief Electoral Officer, one has seen the election process at levels closer than the CEC and the very supportive court. But one has never witnessed such a man-made crisis, including so many deaths of election officials, by suicide or under extreme work pressure, and nor has the Supreme Court ever intervened at every step to supplant executive officers with judicial ones. One is not sure if the undefined and unquestioned power under Article 142 of the Constitution authorises the court to override an explicit provision of the law of parliament without elucidating why it was so absolutely necessary. We refer to Section 24 of the Representation of People Act of 1950 that clearly says that appeals against deletions from voters’ lists shall lie with the district magistrate or additional DM or nominated executive magistrate — which the Supreme Court handed over to retired high court judges to decide. Thus, 27 lakh citizens (or the overwhelming majority of them) were debarred from voting until their appeals against deletions that had been done primarily by the CEC’s opaque and unaccountable computer, are disposed of. This may take a hundred years, going by the present rate of disposal.  

Having said all this, one must accept the hard fact that the decisive vote in Bengal for the BJP was not in protest against these palpable actions, but to express undisguised wrath against Mamata Banerjee. Her Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s terrible image and worse record of........

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