CBI’s conduct in West Bengal has unmasked BJP’s inability to come to terms with electoral setback in the state

Malayalam news channel Asianet came under right-wing attacks for ‘ignoring’ the Bengal post poll violence. The phone call it received was one of many similar calls made to media offices in other states. The BJP and Sangh parivar have launched a nationwide campaign to malign and harass TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee. This strategy acquired momentum after the news of Mamata being projected as the challenger to Modi started making the rounds at the national level.

The RSS and BJP are not only indulging in maligning game at the national level, they have been using all available forums – the CBI, the Union Home Ministry and Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar – to accomplish its mission. They have been resorting to an aggressive posture even while presenting themselves as the victim.

Losing the Bengal assembly election has eclipsed the charisma and image of Narendra Modi and the authority of Amit Shah which he has been wielding as the Union Home Minister.

RSS ideologues nurse the view that standing on a weak podium, Modi and Shah cannot aspire to win the elections of the UP assembly or any other state. They also cannot aspire to go to Lok Sabha election in 2024 with a shaken confidence. They have to muster courage to challenge the popularity of Mamata. Unless her leadership is challenged in a resolute manner, the party could not retain the seats it had won in 2019.

In fact a senior BJP leader confessed: “We won 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state (in 2019) and we need to defend our turf and ensure we win these seats again in 2024”.

In this backdrop, given Mamata’s image and her emphatic victory, it would be very difficult for the BJP to repeat the Lok Sabha performance not only in Bengal but also in other states.

Insiders maintain that the BJP leadership is scared of the fact that the Bengal verdict would cast an impact on the Uttar Pradesh polls in 2022. Already some news channels have started showing the results of the public opinion giving an edge to Samajwadi Party. This trepidation got strengthened by the worst drubbing the BJP got in the UP panchayat election held merely a month back.

The first major action that the BJP resorted to against Mamata was to arrest TMC ministers and senior leaders on the charges of corruption and their alleged involvement in Narada scam. Before taking recourse to this, Modi-Shah duo had desperately tried to create the impression that Bengal was the worst crime prone state, even worse than Uttar Pradesh.

To validate their manoeuvres, they even sent three teams of Central officers to the state within hours of the TMC reforming the government in West Bengal. But this was not enough. So they had to fall back upon Plan B: the arrest of the senior TMC leaders. They also took to this action to send the message that they have not given up on “Mission Bengal”.

The arrest of Mamata’s ministers by the CBI is the worst kind of vendetta politics. Charge sheets against the four persons were filed long back, and once the charge sheet is filed, arrest for more ‘interrogation’ does not stand scrutiny. But the CBI insisted on arresting them for further probe and investigation.

Incidentally, Dhankar was quite obliging in giving sanction to the CBI to arrest them. The arrests followed an aggressive attack by Dhankhar, who has consistently been busy preparing the ground for imposition of President’s rule in the state. In fact, he described Bengal as a ‘lost case’.

Just after the arrests, he quipped: “There is complete breakdown of constitutional machinery in the state. Total lawlessness & anarchy. Police and administration in silence mode. Hope you realise repercussions of such lawlessness and failure of constitutional mechanism”.

The mindset of Dhankar could be made out from one of his tweets which read: “Cannot overlook such drifting from constitution @MamataOfficial. How can ruling party harmads (mercenaries) be law into themselves...”.

Shockingly he uses the word “harmads” for the TMC cadres who were protesting the arrest.

This single word unravels the truth that a well designed conspiracy was hatched by the CBI, Dhankar and Modi-Shah duo to malign Mamata.

While hearing the CBI’s argument on Monday, the judge of the subordinate court had questioned the need to take the accused — ministers Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim, MLA Madan Mitra and former mayor Sovan Chatterjee who had recently distanced himself from the BJP — into custody when charge sheets against them had been filed.

CBI has been insisting that the case be transferred to some other High Court. They have been trying to portray the protest by the TMC cadres and Mamata against the arrest as an act of defiance of constitutional and legal provisions.

This is part of the design. All this has been a brazen move by the ruling party, not to accept the poll verdict, to make out a case for imposing Central rule in the state. But it also reflects the utter desperation of the Modi-Shah duo, who ought to realise that this would prove to be counterproductive.

It is interesting to note that the CBI has not been talking of the merits of the case. It has been harping on: “Why were the state law minister and four of his cabinet colleagues present in the trial court during the hearing

of the bail petitions? Why did the chief minister and her party’s leaders not dissuade their supporters from agitating outside the CBI office?”

Strangely enough, the CBI did not make the arrests in the four years since the case was handed over to the agency.

Though the CBI alleged that the situation prevailing in Bengal was “unprecedented” and of extraordinary circumstances, it conveniently forgot its motto of “Industry, Impartiality and Integrity” and the uncomplimentary epithet awarded to it by the Supreme Court in 2013 of being a “caged parrot”. Once again, on May 17, the CBI preferred to live up to its reputation.

A general secretary of the BJP confessed that the arrest of the ministers was excessive but defended the move saying they, “If we don’t do anything then even a chunk of our MLAs would also defect”. It is indeed strange that to protect the interests of the party, the BJP leadership is ready to stoop so low and even subvert the constitutional provisions.

Do Modi and Shah think that people of India, specifically the Bengali people, would not react?

It is said that the RSS has been exerting immense pressure on the Modi government to act against Mamata. It is an open secret that the defeat of BJP has shattered the design of the RSS to use Bengal as the fulcrum to spread in the entire east and north east India. They are worried at their failure to communalise the Hindus of the state.

The fact remains that the defeat in Bengal has stung the current regime at the Centre and they are unable to accept it.

(IPA Service)

Views are personal