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Mamata’s ‘I haven’t lost’ verdict will haunt the BJP. Resistance is her grammar

Mamata Banerjee’s words threw her opponents into visible panic. BJP worthies erupted in shrill outrage about Mamata’s failure to ‘respect the Constitution’.

I haven’t lost, and I won’t resign.” This sentence reveals an important fact: chutzpah comes naturally to Mamata Banerjee. She walks in courage, and the language of resistance is her grammar. Again and again she reaches for the broad arc of democratic possibility, brushing aside the grime of fear, intimidation and threat hurled at her.

In attention-deficient times, Banerjee, at her first press meet after the Bengal election results, made the world stand still. “I haven’t lost, and I won’t resign,” she announced.  

The BJP and its echo chamber celebrated its 200-plus seat haul in West Bengal. TV studios were filled with the frenzy of graphics, projections and triumphalism. Talking heads frothed with analyses.

Yet it was this single sentence that electrified the air.  A single sentence froze the moment. A single sentence became a searing indictment of the way the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah-led BJP and the Election Commission of India (ECI) had brazenly manipulated the Bengal assembly polls of 2026. The sentence will linger. It will be quoted. It will haunt.

Her words threw her opponents into visible panic. BJP worthies erupted in shrill outrage about Banerjee’s failure to “respect the Constitution.”  BJP-friendly legal luminaries appeared on TV, brows furrowed and jowls quivering, trembling with indignation. How dare she?  How can she? Does she not understand “constitutional morality?” 

Shrieking BJP spokespersons, comical in their discombobulation, crowded TV studios to lecture her on “grace” and “constitutional propriety.” Why could she not simply accept defeat “gracefully,” they demanded. “Grace?” “Constitutional propriety.” Really?

In a viciously partisan Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, as many as 90 lakh were excluded from Bengal’s electoral rolls. At least 27 lakh were placed in a list of “Logical Discrepancies” despite submitting documents proving their identity. Many had been flagged only because of spelling mistakes or trivial inconsistencies in family details. Appellate Tribunals were meant to examine and clear these cases before polling. Yet before the first phase in Bengal, only 138 (out of 27 lakhs) were examined, of which 136 were found to be genuine voters. If 98 per cent of those examined were legitimate voters, how many more genuine citizens remain excluded?

Lakhs are still waiting to get a fair hearing. Shockingly, scandalously, lakhs have been deprived of the right to vote by executive fiat. Was this constitutional morality, was this “grace”, was this........

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