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Keeping CAPF in Bengal for 60 days raises constitutional questions. It’s not an occupying force

Under Article 324, the ECI requisitions central forces to ensure free and fair polling. But once the ballot boxes are sealed, that authority begins to fade.

Polling in the second and final phase of the West Bengal Assembly election had not yet closed when, at 5:12 pm on Wednesday, the Director General of the CRPF, IPS GP Singh, posted on X that 500 companies of CAPF will stay in the state after the polling, until further orders.

Five hundred companies — drawn from the CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, and SSB, approximately 50,000 personnel — will remain in the state for law-and-order duties through counting day, 4 May. Earlier, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said central forces in Bengal would stay for 60 days after the polls. If we keep aside the operational logic, the constitutional question doesn’t have a firm footing.

Bengal’s warrant for caution

Bengal’s reputation for post-poll violence is not merely a reputation; it is on record. After the 2021 Assembly election, 1,979 complaints were made to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), involving approximately 15,000 victims across 23 districts. The CBI, directed by the Calcutta High Court, registered 52 cases of murder and unnatural death. In the 2018 panchayat elections, the TMC won approximately 34 per cent of seats uncontested, as per the State Election Commission affidavit submitted before the Supreme Court. This was a case of effective suppression of the opposition. So, 50,000 CAPF personnel on standby through 4 May is not excessive caution by any means.

The constitutional architecture

None of this settles what those 50,000 personnel are constitutionally empowered to do once the........

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