Illogical acts: on SIR adjudication, Malda gherao

The gherao of seven judicial officers in Malda on April 1 by a mob marks a disturbing escalation in what has been a fevered election season in West Bengal. The Supreme Court of India condemned it as a “calculated” attempt to disrupt the adjudication process. The Election Commission of India (ECI) has referred the probe to the National Investigation Agency, and the incident has become a flashpoint in the confrontation between the Trinamool Congress (TMC)-led State government and the ECI over the Special Intensive Revision exercise and its aftermath. Election-related violence has largely become a thing of the past in most States, but not in West Bengal, where violence is endemic during any election. This is partly due to the intensity of political contestation. During the era of Left Front dominance, elections were battlegrounds for “area dominance” between the Left and the TMC. The State pioneered panchayati institutions in India, which led to significant politicisation at even the local level. With a largely rural economy and little industrialisation, electoral contests were also about who controlled the power to distribute patronage. Today, the Left Front is a shell of its former self and the polity is dominated by contests between the TMC and the BJP; the TMC using what some academics term a “franchise model of politics,”, leveraging the charisma of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to foster a patronage system with local satraps, and the BJP seeking to import a similar model but with a Hindutva emphasis. This new political contest has brought its own forms of violence.

This year, the contest has been complicated by the SIR. The process has dragged on even after the revised roll, with 7.04 crore electors, down from 7.6 crore in 2024, was released. Close to 60 lakh electors are still being parsed for “logical discrepancies” with roughly 40% of adjudicated cases resulting in rejections. Judicial officers, working under the Court’s oversight, have been clearing this backlog — an exercise that would never have reached this stage had the ECI not relied on flawed software to filter enumeration requests. The Court has allowed appellate tribunals for persons whose names have been rejected, but there is uncertainty over whether these will conclude before polling. With tempers running high over what appears to be significant disenfranchisement — electors and political leaders in affected areas allege that the deletions have disproportionately hit the minority Muslim community — the resort to illegal methods of protest such as the Malda gherao has vitiated the election process. A more electorate-friendly approach to the SIR by the ECI, along with effective interventions by the Court, could have avoided much of the public anger. West Bengal’s political leaders must tamp down the rhetoric, not inflame it.