The appointment of economist and West Bengal BJP MLA Dr Ashok Lahiri as vice-chairman and immunologist Dr Gobardhan Das as a full-time member of NITI Aayog has been hailed as a much-needed confidence-building measure during the ongoing West Bengal Assembly elections.

The hope probably is that the twin appointments will contain the damage caused by Union home minister Amit Shah in describing Kolkata as a "city of slums" and Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself disparaging Jadavpur University in no uncertain terms. The statements were seen to have hurt ‘Bengali pride’ and caused worry in BJP ranks about the effect they might have on the voting pattern in phase two of the elections on 29 April.

The appointments, announced on Saturday, 25 April, are hence intended as damage control. Lahiri, a Brahmin and ‘nationalist’, was former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s choice as chief economic advisor in 2002, continuing in office under Dr Manmohan Singh until 2007. He has been an MLA since 2021 but was denied a ticket to contest in 2026. While he is said to have been a victim of internal squabbles, most observers were taken by surprise because they expected the BJP to project him as the party’s chief ministerial face.

In a video statement released in Bengali, Dr Lahiri saido he is honoured to have been appointed the vice-chairman and added that it was an honour for Bengal and a recognition of its rich tradition of higher education and producing globally acclaimed economists. He cautiously praised the prime minister’s initiative in promoting backward districts as ‘aspirational districts’ and using data to monitor the progress in these districts.

Referring to the PM’s goal of ‘Viksit Bharat’ and ‘Samruddh Bharat’ by 2047, he says in the statement that a lot of work will be needed to achieve the goal. Significantly, the statement was issued on BJP’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya and the party’s own social media pages, but not by Lahiri’s personal social media account.

Lahiri called on the prime minister in New Delhi on Saturday after assuming office. The PM also released a photograph of the two of them and stated, 'Met Shri Ashok Kumar Lahiri Ji and conveyed my best wishes on his being appointed as the Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog. His rich experience in economics and public policy will greatly strengthen India’s reform journey and the journey towards becoming a Viksit Bharat. I am confident his efforts will further energise policymaking in our nation. My best wishes for a fruitful tenure.'

Lahiri has also held positions at Delhi School of Economics, Asian Development Bank, Bandhan Bank, and National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. His international experience includes stints with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. An alumnus of Presidency College (now University), Kolkata and with a career spanning over four decades, he is regarded as one of India's senior economists.

A sharp critic of the West Bengal government’s economic and fiscal policies, he questioned the pre-poll promises made by the Trinamool Congress. In an op-ed piece in Ananda Bazar Patrika earlier this month, he asked from where the money would come for welfare schemes, but refrained from addressing the same concerns about the BJP’s poll promises.

There are sceptics who wonder if the economist will last long if the BJP fails to win in Bengal. Conversely, there are BJP insiders who are convinced that he will be installed as the chief minister in case the BJP wins, recalling Shah’s statement that the BJP’s chief minister would be a son of the soil educated in 'Bengali medium'.

There are also analysts who question if the government seriously expects Lahiri to change the functioning of the NITI Aayog. The experiment of doing away with the Planning Commission, say these critics, has not worked and there is little that the new team under Lahiri can do to reverse NITI Aayog’s disappointing performance so far. 

It’s a war in Bengal. Between Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, which has had an unbroken run of three terms or 15 years in the state, and the united might of the BJP, her Goliath-esque primary adversary, and all the Central agencies it can summon at the flick of a finger.

Even the Election Commission of India (ECI), the administrator and supposedly unquestionable arbiter of ‘free and fair’ elections in the country has outdone itself in Bengal, its exploits here going far beyond the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls that has sent citizen-voters scrambling all over the country and targeted communities fearing worse.

At the time of going to press, the first phase of polling was over in West Bengal and the second phase was due (on 29 April). Union home minister Amit Shah is camping in Kolkata, reportedly until campaigning for phase 2 comes to an end on 27 April.

Playing the role of the BJP’s key strategist and on-ground overseer, he is also waving his stick with characteristic panache. At one of the rallies before the phase 1 voting, he declared “the EC has deployed CAPF (Central Armed Police Forces). If Mamata Banerjee’s goons try to disturb the poll process, I will ensure they are hanged upside down after 4 May”.

The security bandobast is unprecedented. The CAPF deployment includes troops from the CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, SSB, NSG and Assam Rifles, which has put a spring in the stride of BJP workers, and by the same token curbed the exuberance of TMC workers.

Even so, the TMC cadre have not quite lost their old spunk, as BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, out campaigning with personal security guards and armed paramilitary personnel in tow, found out. In a scene that will be remembered, Adhikari is seen glaring at a man and shouting, 'Jai Shri Ram'. The man glares back and bellows 'Joy Bangla!'

Paramilitary forces started arriving in the state a month before polling. On 20 April, The Telegraph reported the deployment of 240,000 CAPF personnel (2,407 companies) for phase 1. To put the number in context, 288 companies were deployed in Manipur at the peak of ethnic violence in 2023.

TMC MP and former journalist Sagarika Ghose wrote in The Print: ‘The BJP has descended on Bengal like an occupying force… hundreds of helicopters, thousands of cars with Z-plus security, workers bussed in from Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, hundreds of companies of central forces and armoured vehicles of the kind deployed in active conflict zones.’

Bullet-proof armoured vehicles commandeered from different parts of the country (including Kashmir) are rolling down the roads as a ‘confidence-building measure’. Troops are marching to establish ‘area domination’.

The CPI(M) — which ruled West Bengal continuously for 34 years (1977–2011) but isn’t in contention anymore, and eager to see the end of Mamata’s ‘reign of terror’ — is not complaining. CPI(M) leader Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, contesting from the Jadavpur seat, welcomed the steps to restrain ‘TMC goons’. “Those who couldn’t vote earlier due to TMC intimidation will now do so fearlessly,” he said.

But Congress leader Pradip Bhattacharya questioned the need to instil fear among the people.

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The ECI has been in overdrive ever since the election was notified and poll dates announced on 15 March. At 4.00 am on 16 March, the state’s seniormost officers — the chief secretary, home secretary, director-general of police, Kolkata police commissioner and ADG (law and order) — were removed in one stroke.

The purge continued, with as many as 483 state government officials removed from their posts and ordered to stay away from any kind of election duty. To contextualise again, the total number of officials transferred before polling in the other three poll-bound states (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam) is 23.

Even replacement police inspectors have been handpicked by the ECI. “The ECI may have information that some officials are beholden to the ruling party and could influence the election, but how did it decide which officials would replace them? Who supplied the names?” asks a retired bureaucrat.

Mamata Banerjee herself has complained that the returning officer in her constituency of Bhabanipur was replaced by a state government employee from Nandigram (known to be close to Suvendu Adhikari), who refused her permission to hold a meeting in her own constituency!

The ECI has also directed that all civic volunteers and village police personnel — not government employees but poorly paid political appointees — be confined to police lines on polling day and not deployed on election duty. This is akin to RSS volunteers being asked to sit out the elections.

I-PAC, the firm working for the TMC in the state, is possibly the first political consultancy to have been targeted during an election. Raids and notices from the Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax Department intensified in March. Days before phase 1, three I-PAC directors were summoned by the ED to New Delhi and one of them was arrested, reportedly forcing the consultancy to ask employees to go on leave until 11 May.

The SIR has disenfranchised at least 27 lakh voters in West Bengal, a disproportionate number of them Muslims and women. The ECI has bypassed electoral registration officers (EROs) in the state and made use of special observers (4 in Uttar Pradesh but 30 in West Bengal), micro-observers (zero in the rest of the country, 8,000 in West Bengal), 600 retired and serving judicial officers (not deployed in any other state).

The ECI also came up with software to detect ‘logical discrepancies’ (not found anywhere else!), without disclosing the identity of the company contracted and the basis for engaging them.

The 19 appellate tribunals, set up on the instruction of the Supreme Court to hear appeals of voters ‘under adjudication’, had heard only 138 appeals by 21 April and restored the names of 136.

A ‘straight talk to TMC’ tweet from the ECI singled out the party for allegedly vitiating past elections with violence, booth jamming, intimidation and inducement. A returning officer in Kolkata posted an equally offensive tweet asking people to keep Burnol and Boroline (popular ointments for burns and bruises) handy on counting day. No prizes for guessing who was being addressed.

There has been a flurry of never-before directives issued by the chief electoral officer, West Bengal. For instance, a week-long ban on the sale of liquor throughout the state, instead of the usual 48 hours before polling ends. There is even a directive banning house guests for two days before the election!

Most curiously, days before the first phase of polling on 23 April, the ECI announced it had added seven lakh new voters. At a time when 27 lakh voters are running from pillar to post to get their names restored to the voter rolls, where did these new voters come from?

(With inputs from Kunal Chatterjee, Gautam Bhattacharya and Sourabh Sen)