The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
BENGAL’S KANGAROO COURTS
It is getting harder for Mamata Banerjee to distance herself from strongmen linked to TMC
CALL HIM “JCB” or any other name, Tajimul Islam, who has now been arrested in West Bengal’s North Dinajpur district, was captured on video as he meted out punishment to a couple accused of being involved in an extramarital affair. The strongman is among the politically protected enforcers who have, over time, acquired enough power to usurp the authority of the police, administration and judiciary and hold summary trials followed by beatings that are attended by hundreds of villagers-turned-spectators.
The North Dinajpur incident is not an exception. In the second half of June, several incidents in which the mob took the law into its own hands, were reported across the state. In some instances, including one in Pandua in Hooghly district and one in Jhargram, people died.
The North Dinajpur, Pandua and Jhargram incidents reveal that there is a parallel authority that operates outside the system of law and the government, which is not accountable and has no responsibility except to ensure the dominance of the Trinamool Congress in every aspect of life.
In North Dinajpur, two people decided to live together, even though they were legally married to other people. Appointing themselves as the moral police, the people of Dighalgaon village in the Lakhipur gram panchayat gathered at a primary school where an entirely illegal salishi sabha, or kangaroo court, decided to punish the couple. A private matter turned into a public issue.
By taking the law into their own hands, the people of Dighalgaon and the Lakhipur gram panchayat are complicit in breaking the rule of law. The power of community-approved, politically-protected and, therefore, armoured-with-immunity enforcers to carry out illegal acts threatens the power of the government on the one hand and the rule of law on the other. If Tajimul Islam is accountable for his crimes, so are those who turned up for the “hearing”.
The incident points to the reduction of the police and the administration into ineffectual clean-up services, mostly powerless and, therefore, irrelevant. The coercive authority of the state, which is controlled by the government headed by Mamata Banerjee, appears to have been usurped by a league of enforcers who seem to enjoy political protection.
The issue is not how or even when Tajimul Islam or the now notorious Shahjahan Sheikh of Sandeshkhali, accused of land grab and sexual exploitation of women, acquired the sort of immunity that protected them from being apprehended for wrongdoing. The issue is whether the Mamata Banerjee government has the capacity to deal with the problem.
Strangely enough, the June incidents coincided with a televised meeting where Mamata Banerjee named, shamed and blamed ministers, municipal bosses, bureaucrats and the police for being part of a nexus that managed illegalities — in other words, for being corrupt. She read them the riot act for running a parallel administration, the purpose of which was to ensure that encroachments by hawkers and vendors of pavements and streets, unauthorised parking of cars and other vehicles, appropriation of government property and public spaces, even ponds and water bodies, was normalised, so long as the negotiated fee reached the people in power. The dangerous erosion of the rule of law is now a threat to her power as the chief minister and the boss of the Trinamool Congress.
Corruption is a spectre that is going to haunt Mamata Banerjee. She has been working to distance herself from scams and clean up her government and her party before the next elections in 2026, when she will be held to account by voters. Her problem is that there is a link between the perpetrators and the Trinamool Congress and its functionaries in too many instances of wrongdoing.
Mamata Banerjee’s mystique has helped salvage her from the consequences of the rampant abuse of power by people who appear to have immunity from being prosecuted because of their association with the Trinamool Congress. She knows that it cannot last forever and her luck seems to be running out as she challenges the vested interests in her party.
The writer is a senior journalist based in Kolkata
Up until now, Mamata Banerjee’s mystique has helped to salvage her from the consequences of the rampant abuse of power by people who appear to have immunity from being prosecuted because of their association with the Trinamool Congress. She knows that it cannot last forever and her luck seems to be running out as she challenges the vested interests in her party.