Arise Bharat

Author : Col Ajay Kumar (retd)

On Monday, March 9, Mamata Banerjee took her seat at the Metro Channel in Esplanade for a five-day dharna where she declared  war. She called Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar a “superman” and a “super God.” And then c looked straight into the cameras and told him that once the BJP leaves Delhi, today or tomorrow, she’ll hand him over to the people.

Think about that for a second. A sitting Chief Minister telling the head of a constitutional body that the “people” will demand justice from him directly once his “Delhi masters” are gone.  Going beyond just political rhetoric, it’s a blatant attempt to break the morale of every official who dares to follow the rule book instead of the party manual. It’s a direct hit to the pillars of our democracy.

It didn’t stop there. She actually used the platform to issue a veiled, communal warning when she  told the Hindus of Bengal that it’s only because of her that they are safe. Her exact words were that without her being there, “the other community would have finished them in minutes.” Think about that. A sitting Chief Minister using fear as a tool against the very institutions meant to protect the vote.

She isn’t alone in this. Remember Rahul Gandhi at Freedom Park in Bengaluru back in August 2025? He told poll officials, “It will take time, but we will catch you. One-by-one, we will catch you.” Then came his “Hydrogen bomb” of vote theft claims—the so-called H-Files—that alleged 25 lakh fake voters in Haryana. Total duds. The EC trashed those claims as “baseless,” but the message was unambiguous : if we don’t win, the referee is a thief.

In Kolkata when In the morning, the CEC went to Kalighat Temple. TMC activists met him with black flags. Then during the meeting with state officials, a TMC delegation led by Chandrima Bhattacharya walked out, claiming the CEC was “arrogant” because he told her not to shout. But  what actually happened inside? The CEC was asking why West Bengal doesn’t have a Narcotics Advisory Committee. He was asking about law and order. Instead of answering, they walkout.

This “threat culture” is the Oppositions’ last line of defence. They spent decades “managing” the referees. Most in the opposition today are used to having “their” people in these seats. Remember M.S. Gill? He was CEC from 1996 to 2001 and then walked straight into a Congress-backed Rajya Sabha seat and a Union Minister’s post. T.N. Seshan contested elections on a Congress ticket right after retiring. KVK Sundaram and R.K. Trivedi were rewarded with Law Commission chairs, Governor posts, or Padma awards. And we can’t forget Navin Chawla. The Shah Commission once observed he was “unfit to hold any public office” because of his role during the Emergency—especially his treatment of student detainees. Yet, the Congress made him CEC anyway. He was widely seen as an agent of the party, acting as a political conduit for the powers in Delhi.

It wasn’t just the EC. Baharul Islam resigned from the Supreme Court to become a Congress MP. Ranganath Misra, a former Chief Justice, ended up in the Rajya Sabha under the same party.

Now, when that ecosystem is dying, things are being streamlined,  rules are being applied,  it hurts. They charge Gyanesh Kumar with manipulation, but if he’s so biased, how did Congress grow to 99 seats in the last Lok Sabha? How did they win the state assemblies?

Why are they so terrified now? It’s the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). For years, the electoral rolls in Bengal have been a mess of bogus entries. Suvendu Adhikari has been shouting about nearly one crore fake voters—Rohingyas and illegal immigrants facilitated with delayed birth certificates in border districts like Uttar Dinajpur. When the ECI cleaned the list, the net reduction was 61 lakh electors. That’s an 8.3% drop. Another 60 lakh names are “under adjudication” because AI flagged discrepancies. This isn’t disenfranchisement, but a long-overdue audit.

The reality is that Bengal has a dark history of booth capturing. The CPI(M) institutionalised rigging through “scientific” voter list manipulation and booth capture by local cadres. After 2011, this same grassroots machinery shifted allegiance to the TMC, employing the same violent tactics—intimidation and proxy voting—to maintain power, effectively turning former Left “enforcers” into TMC’s dominant political force. Sourja Bhowmick an ex CPM Cadre from West Bengal writes about this in much detail in his book Gangster State: The Rise and Fall of the CPI(M) in West Bengal.

As recent as the last elections, the TMC armed gangs have been shooing away voters for years. Remember the 2018 Panchayat polls? They captured hundreds of booths and literally burnt people alive to spread terror. They’d fire into lines of voters in Maldaha just to keep them from the ballot. This was the “old normal.”

The country is moving on. Formalisation is happening everywhere. While the old guard fights to keep their “managed” institutions, the system is finally working.

The removal notice against CEC Gyanesh Kumar isn’t about democracy. It’s a temper tantrum. It’s the last gasp of a political dispensation that can’t survive in a world with a fair referee. The ECI didn’t blink. On March 15, they announced the election dates. The next day, they removed the state’s Chief Secretary and the DGP. That’s how you handle threats. You assert the Constitution.

The match isn’t fixed anymore. That’s why they’re screaming.