Enforcement directives: On the ED raids in West Bengal

The Enforcement Directorate (ED)’s searches on January 8, in Kolkata, at locations linked to the Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), are a development set to be repeated in the run-up to the West Bengal Assembly election. I-PAC is a political consultancy firm that spearheaded the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s election campaign in 2021. The ED said the searches were part of an ongoing money laundering investigation, unrelated to the election, and aimed at tracing the proceeds of the crime. The TMC held protests across the State on Friday. Even as the raids were on, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee went to the I-PAC office and accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government of using central agencies for political vendetta. She called the raids an “attack on democracy”, and accused the ED of attempting to seize the TMC’s internal political strategy, data and digital material ahead of the election. The ED claims its officials were obstructed and that documents were removed from the premises, and has approached the Calcutta High Court. This is not the first time that central agencies — the ED, the Central Bureau of Investigation and the IT Department — have confronted State governments run by Opposition parties. A pattern is visible across time and space that makes Ms. Banerjee’s claims notable, and the ED’s assertion that its actions are unlinked to politics, feeble.

Regardless of the merits of the case, the ED’s action and its timing bring into the spotlight several issues related to the fairness and integrity of the electoral process, Centre-State relations, and election funding. Incumbents at the Centre and in the States enjoy certain advantages in any election, but the vigilance and fairness of the Election Commission of India, the judiciary, the media and the IT Department could level the playing field to some extent. Partisan behaviour, institutional shortcomings and the weaponisation of state power by incumbents are factors that can render such checks and balances ineffective or impossible. ED raids that tangentially target the TMC follow a pattern of the incumbent at the Centre using state power to corner a party that runs the State government. It is worth recalling that the IT department froze all bank accounts of the principal Opposition party, the Congress, during the 2024 general election. The very fact that agencies and institutions tend to be hyperactive against Opposition governments and parties, and never against the BJP or its associates, is itself revealing. The BJP appears willing to stretch all rules of the game to win in West Bengal, but it should also consider what India might be losing in that pursuit: the confidence of the people in the integrity of state institutions.