Perpetual Protest

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has perfected the art of governance without governing. When confronted by scrutiny, she reaches instinctively for confrontation while alleging conspiracy and claiming victimhood. Her clash with the Election Commission in Delhi over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in her state is less a defence of democracy than a display of her chronic inability to coexist with authority she does not control.

Dragging along her political entourage and carefully curated ‘victims,’ Banerjee sought to turn a routine administrative exercise into a morality play with herself at its centre. Even before discussions with ECI authorities began, the atmosphere was poisoned with insinuations of intimidation and bad faith.

Inside the Election Commission’s headquarters, Banerjee arrived in protest mode and left in a huff, apparently unwilling to hear an explanation that did not validate her suspicions. The insistence of an independent constitutional body on legality and due process seemed to offend Banerjee’s sense of political entitlement.

The West Bengal CM’s politics has long been hostile to institutions that resist her will. Courts, central agencies, governors and now the Election Commission are all are portrayed as tools of an unseen enemy when they fail to fall in line. This permanent siege narrative has become a substitute for governance. It keeps the base mobilised while absolving the leadership of responsibility.

Her sudden concern for disenfranchised voters would be more convincing if West Bengal’s own electoral record were less blemished. The state’s elections are routinely marred by violence, intimidation and partisan administration. Opposition workers are chased off the field and local strongmen decide outcomes long before ballots are cast. To posture as the guardian of electoral purity while presiding over such a system requires either selective memory or breathtaking cynicism.

Equally hollow is her alarmism over SIR. Voter-roll revision is not a novelty, nor is it an assault on democracy. Banerjee’s approach, which is to discredit first and engage later suggests that the real fear is not exclusion of voters but loss of control over the process.

This style of politics erodes public trust in institutions, weakens federal norms and normalises the idea that constitutional bodies must bend before political pressure. Over time, it trains citizens to see rules as weapons and authority as illegitimate unless wielded by their own side.

West Bengal is paying the price of this permanent agitation. Administrative focus is diluted, economic revival remains elusive, and public discourse is coarsened by incessant confrontation. A Chief Minister who is always protesting is rarely governing. Banerjee may still command loyalty from her base through defiance and drama, but leadership demands restraint as much as resistance.

Her clash with the EC was not about voters’ rights but about power, control and an intolerance of scrutiny. Until that changes, her cries of democratic peril will continually sound like the familiar tantrums of a leader who mistakes volume for virtue and confrontation for courage.