In Indian politics, there are certain images that wink at one for being historical artifacts. Ten days after a crushing defeat at the polls a former chief minister walks into the Calcutta High Court, not as a political heavyweight, but in the black gown of an advocate. The picture alone is bewildering
Mamata Banerjee was West Bengal for 15 consecutive years. She was in charge of the police. She was the one who led the administration. Her word was law and there was no changing it. However, this May on a humid Thursday morning, it all changed. With her fortress swept away by a Bharatiya Janata Party wave that swept up 207 assembly seats, Banerjee switched to a law degree she earned in 1982 from Jogesh Chandra College of Law and waded into Court Room No.1 to wage a battle on a completely new turf
Post-poll violence in Bengal is a longstanding and murky spectre. It creeps about the state every time the ballot boxes are closed. However, 2026 elections completely reversed the board. It was a very familiar sight to what happened in the immediate aftermath: Houses vandalized, party offices set ablaze, families running for their lives in the middle of the night. This time, the victims are what’s different. Trinamool Congress workers are the ones who are knocking at the door of judiciary, asking for their life.
The fact that Banerjee didn’t sound like a seasoned litigator that relies heavily on dense jurisprudence before the Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Partha Sarathi Sen suggests that he was not prepared. She sounded like a leader, as her ranks were being gutted. She said she had respect for all of the judges as a lawyer because she was defending this case in the HC for the first time and then she unleashed a savage barrage of accusations
https://www.newsgram.com/west-bengal/2026/05/14/mamata-banerjee-calcutta-hc-post-poll-violence
She gave him a list of 10 people that she said were already deceased. She talked about a widow who has been aged 92 years who was put out of the house by her family which is from the Scheduled Caste, which was a family of the downtrodden. She presented a black picture of the police—the same police who controlled her only weeks ago—at the same instant paralyzed and failing to file FIRs, while fish markets were broken open and homes were looted in public.
“This is not a bulldozer state,” she told the bench, asking for people’s protection now.
Raw political feeling is not exactly welcomed in high courts, however, and the objections of the state’s new legal champions were eager and businesslike. Deputy Solicitor General Dhiraj Kumar Trivedi, who is representing the police outfit which is now under the control of a different people’s chief, rejected the TMC allegations as “ambiguous and bald. He wanted specifics. So, where are the exact dates? Who is the individual complainant(s)? You can’t just arrive in a courtroom with a bunch of photos you’ve not verified and a broad story and then sit back and wait for justice to move forward. What Trivedi’s intent was clear; the political rhetoric simply does not qualify for a Public Interest Litigation.
In public, the opposing sides were more to the point. The BJP leaders highlighted the rich and bitter irony of the TMC raising the cry of political violence. The opposition in Bengal had been making the very same allegations against Banerjee’s government for years, and culminating in the horrific deaths in 2021. You can tell that the leaders of the State BJP brushed aside the ongoing turmoil saying the deaths were due to internal rivalry within the TMC and not state sponsored terror. It’s like a dizzying, cynical merrygo-round. The excuses haven’t changed one bit, just the players saying them.
The court treated the whole situation with forbearance and kept a distance. They didn’t immediately order a sweeping, central probe. Instead, they gave a basic order to the state police: Make sure all persons ejected from their home/shop, no matter which political banner they bear, are brought back safely.
It was a much-needed judicial decision, and maybe a minor tactical win for the TMC. But outside the courtroom was a much more grimmer tale. While Banerjee was moving about the premises, a group of lawyers were gathered around her, yelling “chor, chor” (thief, thief). An old chief minister, who ruled the state practically alone for a hundred years, openly jeered in the corridors of the state’s supreme court. It’s just one indicator of how much the world has changed under her feet.
With a divided party, an antagonistic government and limited powers, Mamata Banerjee is going back to her most primitive instincts. The colossal bureaucratic state has ceased to exist. What is left are the street fighters trying to use the institutional means they have at their disposal to sustain their movement.
