The deliberations between the lawyers representing the Bengal government and the Election Commission of India in the Supreme Court on the matter of the Special Intensive of Revision of the electoral rolls were quite stormy last Friday. Taking note of the recriminations, allegations and counter-allegations, the highest court made a pointed observation. The “blame game”, it stated, was a testament to the trust deficit between the two constitutional bodies: the Bengal government and the EC. This chasm is unfortunate but revelatory. The SIR has been completed in several states and Union territories: but the unambiguous acrimony witnessed in Bengal between the two constitutional entities has been mostly absent elsewhere. The TMC government in Bengal has alleged that the EC has shown a marked preference towards excluding voters’ names: the EC has countered the charge by blaming Bengal’s ruling regime for intimidating poll officials. That the EC has been bureaucratic —insensitive, even imperious — in the course of the SIR cannot be denied. Political partisanship, the consequence of divergent electoral imperatives, has seemingly trumped institutional cooperation. This kind of paucity in institutional trust is undesirable: it is inimical to the interests of democracy and its people.

The apex court, mindful of the great divide, decided to deploy former and serving judicial representatives to resolve the issues arising out of ‘logical discrepancies’ marked out by the EC. But Bengal’s principal political parties have paid scant attention to the Supreme Court’s attempt to find a middle path. The TMC and the BJP have been busy scouting for political brownie points from the court’s directive. The BJP attempted to portray the court’s measure of appointing judicial officers as a blow for its rival. Mamata Banerjee’s party, however, is convinced that the Supreme Court’s decision has led to the EC losing face. The judicial intervention has its own merit. The fact that judicial intervention was required in the first place to resolve the issue speaks poorly of the culture of cooperation between a Central institution and a state government. Surely, the strained ties between the Bengal government and the EC cannot bolster the spirit of federalism in the country. As for the SIR, notwithstanding the conflicting claims between the BJP and the TMC, its real appraisal will be the outcome of the electoral test in the court of the people.