As we had predicted in an earlier report (West Bengal panchayat polls might just be shelved for now; June 12), West Bengal’s state election commission (SEC) finally approached the Supreme Court on June 26 for a resolution to the panchayat election impasse between the SEC and the Trinamool Congress government.

Mira Pande, the state election commissioner, finally had had enough of the state government’s shrill filibustering: she did not wait for the order – or another mediatory “proposal” – from the Calcutta high court, and moved a determinatory petition in the apex court at 12.30 pm. Pande’s clever timing – before the lunch break at 1 pm – ensured that the supreme court would pass some sort of order before it retired for the day at 4 pm.

As it transpired, the two-judge SC bench of justices AK Patnaik and Ranjan Gogoi had their order ready at 2.10 pm, 10 minutes after the end of the lunch break. Their order said: “List this matter on June 28 when the West Bengal government and the Centre, through ministry of home affairs, will apprise this court as to how they propose to meet the requirements of forces mentioned in the order of May 14 of the high court as well as the communication of the Election Commission of May 14 and June 22.”

The alacrity and the informational clarity behind the order – they were clearly well up on the state government-SEC tussle in the Calcutta high court – indicated that the apex court had been primed for intervention. An order on June 28 would leave the SEC and the state government with a scant three days before the first phase of the panchayat elections.

But, essentially, the Supreme Court batted the issue back at the central government and the state government. It asked why the Centre could not provide necessary security personnel to the state for the two-week duration of the elections. And it asked the state government to explain why it had elected to ignore the Calcutta high court’s explicit and emphatic order of May 14 (a clarification to which on June 13 established that the SEC had primacy in the matter of panchayat elections).

Passing the buck

The timeline explains why the apex court thinks that both the Centre and the West Bengal government might be guilty of electoral indiscretion. (In fact, both were stonewalling and dilatory, at the same time, but the court cannot be expected to take a denunciatory stand – yet.) First, the state government had written to the Centre requesting supplementary forces on May 29, two days after the SEC notified the election dates; the SEC had asked the state government to prepare adequate security for the elections as far back as August 2012, and then sent a reminder almost every month thereafter. The state government – read, Mamata Banerjee, because in West Bengal’s autarchy, she decides everything – ignored the SEC’s increasingly desperate missives.
The Centre, through Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, assured the state government on June 12 that it would make some forces available for the panchayat elections, but not the 300 companies that Banerjee had belatedly asked for. The Centre didn’t utter a word on the matter thereafter, and watched the entire guerre de deux unravel in Calcutta high court.

But the supreme court’s order, which didn’t mention the high court’s clarification on July 13 on its May 14 order, has left Banerjee with a chink to exploit in the service of her unceasing impeding and kibitzing to stop democratic institutions in their tracks. In its original order, the Calcutta high court had, in a spasm of balancing when it should have paid attention to its constitutional conscience, rejected the SEC's demand for 800 companies of central forces, and directed that the elections be held in three phases and the process be completed by July 15.

Realising its error, it repaired this order with a massive clarification – almost a new order in itself – on June 13, saying that the final decision lay with the SEC and not the state government.

It is difficult not to conjecture that the Centre’s inertness is Olympian politics at work: what better way to stymie Mamata Banerjee’s “federal front” extempore idea – absurd as it is, since nowhere in the constitution is the word “federation” mentioned but “union of states” is – than to wreck it through a demonstration of how unfederate it actually is without central help? The Centre’s duplicity is stunning. On February 25, for instance, Shinde had announced during a visit to West Bengal that central forces posted in Jangalmahal would be relocated to Darjeeling, which was then sitting on a powder-keg. His announcement, and the fact that he refused to comment on the flatlining law-and-order situation in the state, went unremarked, even though Jangalmahal was – and remains – vulnerable to a Maoist regrouping.

Haggling over security forces

But, more recently, when the state government upped the forces it could deploy from 45,000 to 60,000 by offering to withdraw 10,000 security personnel from Jangalmahal (and the rest from among the West Bengal Police and Kolkata Police), opposition temperatures in the state spiked.

As things stand, the West Bengal government still does not have the minimum security needed to hold the panchayat elections. According to SEC’s revised estimates, 1.49 lakh personnel – its earlier demand – won’t do: at the supreme court, it contended that it would need 2.41 lakh personnel, 1.4 lakh of them armed. The SEC has decided to play a bit larger than life because it seems to have finally come to terms with the fact that this election will be more an exercise in bargaining than in arithmetic. With a figure of 2.41 lakh, it can afford to bargain down to 1.5 lakh – or so it has been led to think in view of Mamata Banerjee’s fishmarket haggling for every little concession.

Whatever the supreme court’s final order on June 28, it is almost inconceivable that the panchayat elections in West Bengal will be held on the notified dates. First, three days is too short a time for security personnel to be mobilised, even granted that the full complement will be made available, perhaps by magic; second, hardly any of the infrastructure is in place – with the number of polling days still hanging fire, no polling officers or their subordinates have been given their destinations; not a rupee of the money to run the booths and hire vehicles has been disbursed; in most districts, distribution centres – from where the polling teams collect ballot boxes and ballot papers – have not been set up.

With the monsoon fury about to break over the state, which will leave the districts of Birbhum, Bardhaman, Nadia, Purulia, Murshidabad, Midnapore, Dinajpur and Hooghly virtually rained to a standstill, it is probable – not just possible – that the panchayat elections in West Bengal will be held only in November 2013, after the Durga Puja (whose dead zone is a month antequam and two weeks postquam).

None of what is happening in West Bengal today because of one person’s messianic obduracy – Mamata Banerjee’s – is following a model. In more than one sense, every party involved is shooting in the dark. The only party that thinks firing blind is an advantage is the Trinamool.