In Bengal, EC has laid the foundation for a fair poll

(The article was originally published in Indian Express on April 18, 2026 as a part of Dr Madhav’s column titled ‘Ram Rajya’. Views expressed are personal.)

What the Election Commission of India, led by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, did in Bengal for the upcoming Assembly elections is unprecedented. The election commission was transformed from a docile body into a powerful election watch dog during 1990s by T N Seshan, the then CEC from 1990 to 1996. Seshan’s tenure showed to the people in general and political parties in particular that the commission was not just a paper tiger but a real one. Except for the election commission in South Africa, no other country has such powerful commissions to conduct elections.

Three decades later, the present election commission once again flexed its muscles to prove that it can go to any lengths to ensure honesty and integrity of the election process. The new-found vigour and assertiveness of the commission can be found in its response to the criticism of a Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) delegation that met it recently. “This time, the elections in West Bengal would surely be: fear-free, violence-free, intimidation-free, inducement-free, seizure-free, and booth & voter jamming-free”, it said through a tweet.

Bengal, scheduled to go for polls later this month, acquired notoriety over years for electoral malpractices like booth capturing, voter jamming, intimidation and misuse of officialdom. Extreme levels of violence, not just during, but after the elections too, especially by the goons of the ruling party, seriously impacted the integrity of the electoral process by creating a sense of fear and insecurity in the minds of the voters. Under chief minister Mamata Benarjee, the state became a hub of illegitimate electioneering and unchecked malpractices. In the last more than a decade, Mamata turned Bengal into a TMC party citadel mastering various kinds of evil practises to win elections. The level of violence unleashed by her party during and after the elections in 2021 dismayed even the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which described it as the “law of the ruler” as against the “rule of law”. Ordered by the Calcutta High Court, the NHRC had constituted a committee to look into the complaints of violence, which submitted its report in July 2021. The report documented thousands of complaints involving murder, rape, molestation and arson. It also stated that thousands were displaced due to the violence and forced to flee to neighbouring states like Assam. It accused the state administration and police of being either mute spectators or active connivers in violence. It identified the workers of the opposition, mainly the BJP as the major target of this violence.

It is not an easy task to clean up the rotten structure of Bengal built through years of sustained misuse of power by Mamata and her coterie. But the election commission seems determined to end that jungle raj in this election. The boldest step that the commission took was to clean up the electoral rolls in the state. States like Bengal and Bihar, that abutted Bangladesh, witnessed sharp rise in populations in general and voter numbers in particular in the last two decades after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in 2002. In Bihar, the electorate had doubled between 2002 and 2025 whereas in Bengal it grew from 45 million in 2002 to 75 million in 2025. The current round of SIR, initiated last year, led to deletion of around six million names during the elections to Bihar assembly. In Bengal too, the ECI undertook an intensive SIR which resulted in the deletion of millions of non-existing or fraudulent voters. The EC had to endure severe criticism from the ruling TMC and a few other opposition parties over the exercise. But those who raise objections forget that the Supreme Court had, in N P Ponnuswami matter in January 1952, categorically stated that vote is not a fundamental right but a legal right subject to limitations of law. Like in Bihar, the final voter list in Bengal too is likely to have over 68 million voters.

The commission also decided not to take any chances with regards to the law-and-order challenges and electoral malpractices during the campaign and voting process, especially on the polling day. It deployed more than 1100 companies of central security forces – nearly 2.4 lakh personnel, highest ever deployment in any state. During the 2021 elections, the commission had deployed about 1000 companies.  In order to reassure people about preventing the possible post-poll violence, it announced that the central forces would remain deployed for at least a month after the polls.

The commission earmarked thousands of booths, anywhere around 30 to 40 percent, out of a total of 80,700, as sensitive, where extra deployment of forces and extra vigilance will be undertaken. In some seats, like Kolkata North parliament, almost 45 percent booths were declared sensitive. More than 2 lakh cameras were deployed in and around polling booths and an effective AI-based round-the-clock monitoring and surveillance system was also put in place to prevent any mischief. The commission warned that intimidation outside the polling station would also be treated as booth capturing and could lead to cancellation of polls and ordering of repolls.

In order to prevent the possibility of misuse of official machinery by the ruling establishment, the commission resorted to multiple rounds of transfers of officials suspected of doubtful electoral integrity. Those removed by the commission included several senior state officials, like the Chief Secretary, DGP, Home Secretary, Kolkata Police Commissioner, and the Additional DGP (Law and Order). Estimates put the number of such transfers since the elections were announced to more than 550. The commission also deployed around 1100 observers, highest in recent years, to strictly monitor the elections. They included General observers, Police observers and Expenditure observers.

In effect, in the upcoming Assembly elections in Bengal, the Election Commission is combining traditional tools like security apparatus, election observers, and re-polls with modern tools like AI-based surveillance, full webcasting and real time monitoring to ensure that elections are free, fair, and violence-free.

The commission put its boldest foot forward. Its real test is on the polling day.