Is Mamata Pushing Bengal Towards the Edge of President’s Rule?
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ED’s explosive court plea alleging ‘complete subversion of rule of law’ raises a constitutional question West Bengal can no longer dodge
By NIRENDRA DEV
New Delhi, January 10, 2026 — The question West Bengal is being forced to confront today is no longer political—it is constitutional. When an enforcement agency of the Union government tells the Calcutta High Court that the “complete subversion of rule of law” has been caused by the political executive itself, the alarm bells are no longer rhetorical. They are institutional.
The Enforcement Directorate’s plea, arising from its aborted raids at I-PAC’s Salt Lake office and the Loudon Street residence of its chief Pratik Jain in connection with a coal pilferage probe, makes allegations unprecedented in their gravity. According to the agency, lawful search proceedings were obstructed, crucial digital evidence forcibly removed, and ED officers prevented from discharging their statutory duties—allegedly with the active involvement of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and state police.
Courts, too, appear unsettled. Orchestrated chaos inside the courtroom led Justice Subhra Ghosh to walk out, deferring the hearing to January 14. Acting Chief Justice Sujoy Paul declined to intervene or reassign the matter, leaving a dangerous vacuum where adjudication should have stepped in.
What compounds the crisis is the Governor’s intervention. C.V. Ananda Bose’s remarks were carefully worded but devastating: constitutional authorities breaking the Constitution is a graver offence, he warned, explicitly citing obstruction of public servants as a criminal act. Governors rarely speak this plainly unless the constitutional machinery is visibly strained.
This brings Article 356 into unavoidable focus. Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer once described President’s Rule as a mechanism not of punishment but of restoration of constitutional propriety after governance collapses. India’s history—from the dismissal of BJP governments after Babri Masjid, to the fall of the DMK government in 1990, to Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh in 2016—shows that political colour has never insulated states once institutional breakdown is established.
President’s Rule remains controversial, and rightly so. But when law enforcement is allegedly paralysed by the state executive, courts are disrupted, and the Governor signals constitutional distress, denial becomes indulgence.
West Bengal may not yet be under President’s Rule—but the trajectory is unmistakable. The real question is no longer “if” the debate will intensify, but whether constitutional repair will come through restraint—or compulsion.
(This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are author’s own)
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