Muslims linked to TMC named most in EC’s new ‘worry list’ after HC stayed earlier ‘troublemakers’ list

In a new direction sent by the Election Commission of India to the DGP, West Bengal, where it has named thousands of people in what is being called a “worry list”, including politicians linked to the TMC from across 142 constituencies scheduled to go to polls on April 29, to be kept under preventive detention/action over apprehensions that they may engage in subversive activities, including intimidation of voters, it has emerged that a majority of the names are Muslims linked to the ruling party.

The fresh communication is likely to trigger allegations that the Commission, while formally acknowledging the High Court’s interim stay on its earlier ‘trouble makers’ list, is attempting to reintroduce substantially similar coercive measures through a reworded administrative directive.

The fresh memorandum, reviewed by The Wire, was forwarded from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal, to the state police establishment while directing immediate “preventive detention/action” against persons whom the Commission claimed “may attempt or may conspire to intimidate voters and may disturb the electoral process” in their respective Assembly constituencies.

Unlike the earlier controversial communication circulated by the Commission, the latest memorandum carried the signature of a police observer attached to the CEO’s office.

The communication asserted that hundreds of complaints relating to voter intimidation had been received in the CEO’s control room during the first phase of polling and referred to violent incidents, including the attack on a political candidate in Bhatpara in which a CISF jawan reportedly sustained bullet injuries, alongside another alleged assault on a candidate in Kumarganj in Dakshin Dinajpur, according to The Wire report.

The Commission, while invoking these incidents to justify intensified preventive action, instructed police authorities to communicate a “strong and unambiguous message” that raids, arrests and coercive preventive measures were indispensable for ensuring “free and fair elections”.

The memorandum acknowledged the interim intervention of the Calcutta High Court, which had stayed the earlier contentious list of alleged “trouble makers” circulated by the Commission on April 22, after the exercise was challenged through a public interest litigation filed on behalf of the Trinamool Congress.

The court had observed that the Election Commission did not possess “unbridled powers” under Article 324 of the Constitution and clarified that preventive detention could only be exercised strictly in accordance with existing penal and detention laws.

The petition, moved by advocate Mohd Danish Farooqui, alleged that the Commission had clandestinely prepared and disseminated a politically loaded inventory overwhelmingly populated by workers, office-bearers and legislators associated with the Trinamool Congress.

He also contended that arbitrary arrests without demonstrable criminal grounds would constitute a grave encroachment upon civil liberty and democratic participation.

Directions issued by the Director General of the CRPF instructed security personnel to act “aggressively and ruthlessly” against “trouble mongers” during the silence period preceding polling, while authorising the use of non-lethal force wherever deemed necessary for ensuring what the Commission described as a “fear-free election”.