BJP won, democracy lost
Crooked manner of SIR has cast a long shadow on Bengal elections Alok Tiwari Despite the stunning rise of film star Vijay’s TVK party in Tamil Nadu and Congress’s return to power in Kerala, the just concluded round of state elections were mostly about West Bengal. This was the election with highest stakes and where BJP applied its full might to remove the three-term incumbent Mamata Banerjee. In the end it crushed Mamata’s TMC, winning over 200 of the 294 seats and confining TMC to two digits. The Left and the Congress remained on the sidelines. What made the Bengal polls different was the long and bitter fight not just over promises, policies, and performance but also on the process. TMC challenged the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls launched by the Election Commission months before the elections at every step. Mamata herself appeared before the Supreme Court. Nothing new in this. There were many challenges to SIR from several states in its new avatar that se...