Opinion Express View on ED and TMC clashing in West Bengal: It should not be Your Agency versus My Police
The Opposition should certainly call out the weaponisation of Central agencies by the BJP-led political establishment, just as the BJP did when the CBI was called a “caged parrot” during the UPA regime. But Mamata Banerjee's methods risk undermining her own cause
The Opposition should certainly call out the weaponisation of central agencies by the BJP-led political establishment, just as the BJP did when the CBI was called a “caged parrot” during the UPA regime. The drama in West Bengal did not begin on Thursday when the Enforcement Directorate undertook raids in several locations in Kolkata and Delhi, and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, along with her state’s police personnel, stood in the way. There has been a long battle of attrition between the Banerjee government and central agencies. It has prominent markers like the 2019 showdown over the CBI questioning of the then Kolkata police commissioner in the Saradha and Rose Valley scam investigations, with the CM herself staging a sit-in, and the flare-up in Sandeshkhali in 2024, involving an attack on ED personnel amid allegations of collusion between the TMC and West Bengal Police. It is also clear that behind the recurring stand-offs lies a pattern of the central agency acting in ways that invite allegations of the selective targeting of the BJP’s opponents. After all, an overwhelming number of the cases involving politicians filed by the CBI and ED on the watch of the Modi government have been against Opposition leaders ahead of a state election. So, by pushing back over the ED’s action against I-PAC — a political consultancy that today works with the TMC and the DMK, and which is the centrepiece of an ecosystem that grew around and after the BJP’s Lok Sabha campaign in 2014 — isn’t Banerjee fighting the much-needed fight? Yes and no.
The Opposition should certainly call out the weaponisation of central agencies by the BJP-led political establishment, just as the BJP did when the CBI was called a “caged parrot” during the UPA regime. But Banerjee’s methods risk undermining its case and her own cause. She is the elected chief minister, not just the TMC chief. She cannot afford to bypass due process. In a constitutional system with countervailing institutions and checks and balances, Banerjee is forsaking, rather than mounting the high ground, by making it a stand-off between Your Agency and My Police. The ED’s charges against I-PAC — that it is involved in alleged coal smuggling and money laundering — may or may not hold. But that will be decided only after a lawful process and after the case has its day in court.
In her own party, her nephew and national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee has previously been questioned by the ED, in the illegal mining case and also in connection with the cash-for-school jobs scam. Now, Chief Minister Banerjee should ask questions of the Centre’s control over the central agency by all means, but she should allow the law to take its course. I-PAC can speak, and fight, for itself. Anything else invites questions and concerns about the intimacies between the party and the political consultancy at a time when a much larger issue is at stake.
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