Name him “JCB” or every other title, Tajimul Islam, who has now been arrested in West Bengal’s North Dinajpur district, was captured on video as he meted out punishment to some accused of being concerned in an extramarital affair. The strongman is among the many politically protected enforcers who’ve, over time, acquired sufficient energy to usurp the authority of the police, administration and judiciary and maintain abstract trials adopted by beatings which are attended by tons of of villagers-turned-spectators.
The North Dinajpur incident shouldn’t be an exception. Within the second half of June, a number of incidents through which the mob took the regulation into its personal palms, have been reported throughout the state. In some situations, together with one in Pandua in Hooghly district and one in Jhargram, individuals died.
The North Dinajpur, Pandua and Jhargram incidents reveal that there’s a parallel authority that operates outdoors the system of regulation and the federal government, which isn’t accountable and has no accountability besides to make sure the dominance of the Trinamool Congress in each facet of life.
In North Dinajpur, two individuals determined to stay collectively, regardless that they have been legally married to different individuals. Appointing themselves because the ethical police of the neighborhood, the individuals of Dighalgaon village within the Lakhipur gram panchayat gathered at a main faculty the place a wholly unlawful salishi sabha, or kangaroo courtroom, determined to punish the couple. A non-public matter become a public problem.
By taking the regulation into their very own palms, the individuals of Dighalgaon and the Lakhipur gram panchayat are complicit in breaking the rule of regulation. The ability of community-approved, politically-protected and, subsequently, armoured-with-immunity enforcers to hold out unlawful acts threatens the ability of the federal government on the one hand and the rule of regulation on the opposite. If Tajimul Islam is accountable for his crimes, so are those that turned up for the “listening to”.
The incident factors to the discount of the police and the administration into ineffectual clean-up providers, principally powerless and, subsequently, irrelevant. The coercive authority of the state, which is managed by the federal government headed by Mamata Banerjee, seems to have been usurped by a league of enforcers who appear to take pleasure in political safety.
The problem shouldn’t be how and even when Tajimul Islam or the now infamous Shahjahan Sheikh of Sandeshkhali, accused of land seize and sexual exploitation of girls, acquired the type of immunity that protected them from being apprehended for wrongdoing. The problem is whether or not the Mamata Banerjee authorities has the capability to cope with the issue.
Surprisingly sufficient, the June incidents coincided with a televised assembly the place Mamata Banerjee named, shamed and blamed ministers, municipal bosses, bureaucrats and the police for being a part of a nexus that managed illegalities — in different phrases, for being corrupt. She learn them the riot act for operating a parallel administration, the aim of which was to make sure that encroachments by hawkers and distributors of pavements and streets, unauthorised parking of vehicles and different automobiles, appropriation of presidency property and public areas, even ponds and water our bodies, was normalised, as long as the negotiated charge reached the individuals in energy. The harmful erosion of the rule of regulation is now a menace to her energy because the chief minister and the boss of the Trinamool Congress.
Corruption is a spectre that’s going to hang-out Mamata Banerjee. She has been working to distance herself from scams and clear up her authorities and her social gathering earlier than the following elections in 2026, when she will probably be held to account by voters. Her drawback is that there’s a hyperlink between the perpetrators and the Trinamool Congress and its functionaries in too many situations of wrongdoing.
Mamata Banerjee’s mystique has helped salvage her from the implications of the rampant abuse of energy by individuals who seem to have immunity from being prosecuted due to their affiliation with the Trinamool Congress. She is aware of that it can not final ceaselessly and her luck appears to be operating out as she challenges the vested pursuits in her social gathering.
The author is a senior journalist primarily based in Kolkata