India can do without a federal face off

India can do without a federal face off

What we are witnessing in Kolkata is a political fight between BJP and Trinamool Congress, in which the CBI and federal propriety are being used as parts of the warring parties’ arsenal. Mamata Banerjee’s government has been hindering BJP leaders’ attempts to campaign in West Bengal, such as by denying UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath permission to land his helicopter in the state. BJP is hitting back, using a sudden escalation of the CBI’s languid investigation into the state’s chit fund scam, claiming destruction of evidence by Kolkata’s police commissioner. Ms Banerjee, with a sharp eye for the dramatic potential of any political development, started a dharna outside the commissioner’s office.

She has been joined by her supporters. And Opposition leaders who had stood with her on the platform of the anti-BJP Mahagathbandhan are extending support. That is against a central police agency operating at the state level without the permission of the state government. This is a fine principle to defend. But there is the minor inconvenience of a massive Ponzi scheme that had cheated very many small savers of serious sums of money, to investigate into which the state government was obliged to cooperate with the central investigation agency, the CBI. The CBI officials, who suddenly decided to question the police chief of Kolkata at his home, should have had some evidence to back up their claim of destruction of evidence and should have sought an explicit directive from the Supreme Court to elicit the state government’s cooperation.

Both sides have made their point and must now back off. A Centre-state conflict is not what India’s fractious polity needs. The CBI should be pulled up for its high-handedness and the state administration asked to cooperate with the probe.