Listen to this article:

While many Indians still hold the Supreme Court to be a fair institution — standing amidst the ruins of many collapsed constitutional bodies — the present Election Commission of India (ECI) is considered to have reached an unimaginable nadir. 

The recent  disenfranchisement of a large swathe of West Bengal’s population, however, leaves one with no option but to analyse the Supreme Court’s judicial approach to what is purely an executive process. Not that any institution is singularly responsible, but many level-headed people in Bengal and India feel that either the ECI or the state government have led the court down the garden path – since both welcomed its order, despite its impossible time-schedule – or the court’s well meaning intervention has just boomeranged.  

To give two examples of similar recent boomerangs, one can mention the order of a former Chief Justice of India, the one with the highest promise in recent times, who gave us a painful, historic disappointment. He intervened in the RG Kar Medical College rape-murder case, which had led to a totally unprecedented mass upsurge in West Bengal, and withdrew the case from the Calcutta high court’s tight supervision. This led to the matter simply withering  away without justice being served.

Another recent order of the Supreme Court punished all 26,000 school teachers and staff (some who paid bribes, but most were untainted), to appear for re-examination, just because the West Bengal government convoluted the issue so craftily that his lordship threw up his hands in despair. This, in effect, permitted a blatant bribe guzzling regime in West Bengal to escape retribution for deliberately not separating the ‘tainted’ and others — though it knew exactly who was what. 

Similarly, many highly educated and genuinely well meaning citizens feel the Supreme Court’s intervention in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in West Bengal, botched by the ECI and the state government, is the third such unsuccessful attempt – a hat-trick. 

The ECI purposely squeezed a nine-month process into four months to manipulate the batting crease and then, by squabbling like two angry tomcats, the ECI and the state government created a situation that ensured that lakhs of voters would be deleted. The Supreme Court’s exasperated (but late) decision on  February 20 to order judicial officers – some 700 could be requisitioned – to adjudicate 60 lakh cases of “logical discrepancies” led to the last rites of electoral democracy for many in Bengal. 

One had expected the ECI would be compelled to admit that it had totally centralised decision-making in roll revision — which is unprecedented and violated autonomy of levels in election law, but this did not happen. Instead, the ECI belched out this mysterious and controversial term, to the detriment of millions.

While the tormenting gherao that seven judicial officers were subjected to in Malda, West Bengal, was totally unacceptable, we must understand that it was an ingenious or disingenuous plan to draw national attention to the frustration of the numerous disenfranchised Muslim voters. It appears that it was the handiwork of a gang of trouble-makers allegedly led by an ‘outside’ Muslim party. 

The Supreme Court’s reaction was instantaneous and understandable, but few realised that everyone gained from the unsavoury incident. It is difficult to believe that the state government had no clue about it, and one assumes that it allowed it to happen, so that the “thunder” of frustrated deleted voters could be heard loud and clear. 

It would be irresponsible for the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC)........

© The Wire