A reported attack on former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s car is reprehensible and must be condemned without qualification. Political differences can never justify violence, intimidation or an attack on a political leader. The state government must order an impartial investigation, identify those responsible and ensure that they are prosecuted in accordance with law. But condemnation of the attack cannot mean accepting the political narrative being built around it. To immediately attribute the incident to the ruling BJP, without waiting for the investigation to establish the facts, is not responsible politics. It amounts to politicising an incident that deserves an objective probe. More importantly, Mamata Banerjee’s outrage would carry considerably greater moral authority if her government had always shown the same urgency when political opponents and ordinary voters complained of intimidation and violence. West Bengal has a long and unfortunate history of election-related violence. The 2021 post-poll violence remains particularly difficult to ignore. The National Human Rights Commission took suo motu cognisance of reports of deaths, attacks, burning of party offices, ransacking of homes and looting, and specifically observed that district administration and local law-enforcement agencies appeared not to have acted to prevent violations of human rights. The NHRC subsequently submitted its report to the Calcutta High Court. That record cannot simply be erased from public memory. There were also repeated allegations from BJP workers and supporters that they were intimidated, attacked or forced to leave their homes after elections. Claims that voters in some areas, particularly those perceived to be sympathetic to the BJP, were prevented from freely exercising their franchise have also been repeatedly raised. Such allegations deserve investigation rather than partisan dismissal. The right to vote is not a favour bestowed by the ruling party; it is a constitutional right. If even one citizen is prevented from voting because of political intimidation, the entire democratic process is compromised. The contrast becomes even more striking when one recalls the December 2020 attack on BJP president J.P. Nadda’s convoy in South 24 Parganas. Vehicles were damaged after stones were hurled at the convoy, and the incident triggered a serious confrontation between the state government and the Centre over law and order. Seven people were subsequently arrested in connection with the attack.
Therefore, when Mamata now complains that the police are behaving like “government agents”, the obvious question is: where was this concern for political neutrality when BJP leaders and workers were allegedly under attack during her tenure? The same question applies to the political climate she helped create. She had herself warned that the Prime Minister and Union Home Minister would face opposition to campaigning in Bengal. Politics cannot become democratic only when one is out of power. The 2026 Assembly election result has delivered an unmistakable political message. The BJP won 207 of the 293 declared seats, against the Trinamool Congress’s 80, with the BJP securing 45.84 per cent of the vote and the TMC 40.80 per cent. The scale of the verdict suggests that Bengal’s electorate was not merely voting along conventional political lines; it was also expressing its verdict on governance, political culture and the accumulated grievances of a decade and a half. Even the subsequent political churn within the TMC camp, including MPs moving towards the NDA, underlines the extent of the upheaval. None of this justifies an attack on Mamata Banerjee. Nor should the BJP government be given a free pass if its administration fails to protect political opponents. The same standard must apply to everyone. That is precisely the point. Mamata deserves security, justice and protection from political violence—not because she is Mamata Banerjee, but because she is a citizen and a former Chief Minister. But the people of Bengal deserve the same protection, whether they vote for the BJP, TMC, Left, Congress or nobody at all. Democracy cannot function on the principle that violence is unacceptable when it happens to one’s own side but explainable when it happens to the opponent. Mamata Banerjee should therefore demand a fair investigation into the attack on her convoy. But she should also accept the larger democratic lesson: accountability cannot be selective, and the past cannot be conveniently forgotten every time political fortunes change.
